


Long Term Experiments in Ionic Compounds

by anselm0



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, John-centric, Not Season/Series 03 Compliant, POV John Watson, Post-Reichenbach, Reunion Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-27
Updated: 2013-12-27
Packaged: 2018-01-06 07:50:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 39,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1104294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anselm0/pseuds/anselm0
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John is not <em>willing</em> to be broken, to let the single greatest connotation of his all too brief time with Sherlock be loss.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Decomposition

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first work in the (amazing! fantastic! meretricious!) Sherlock fandom and I've been sitting on it a while, editing and rewriting and looking for a beta; even though I never found one, I hope I have done justice to this fandom and emulate in some small degree the incredible calibre of writing I've been privileged to read.
> 
> My thanks to my sisters for the informal read-throughs and feedback and to all my readers. I would enormously appreciate any comments and reviews you might feel moved to leave; as I said, this has not been beta'd or Brit-picked, so if you see something, please say something!
> 
> Mind the chapter notes for trigger warnings. Obviously, chapter one starts with the traumatizing end of series two, but I'm sure we've all gotten over that by now. (I will never get over it. Never, Moffat. _Not ever_.)

People expect John Watson to go to pieces when Sherlock Holmes dies. They expect his limp and his latent familial predisposition to alcohol dependency to come to the surface. They expect him to move out of Baker Street, perhaps out of London altogether; Sally thinks he might even follow Sherlock into death the way he had in life, but she doesn’t ever dare say so aloud.

John does go to pieces. The idea that he would not have done is so utterly ludicrous that he doesn’t even feel ashamed. 

It happens on the day. Not in the moment John’s suspicions about what was going on coalesced – _This phone call… It’s my note. That’s what people do, isn’t it?_ – nor in the moment when they were confirmed – throwing his phone away, spreading his arms (theatrical to the last,) no, stop, “Sherlock!” Stop, don’t—!

That isn’t when it happens. That is horrible in its own right, but there is still a seed of hope as John lurches forward involuntarily. Falls are tricky, nearly impossible to predict, but if anyone could, it would be Sherlock, even if the odds for surviving a twenty-meter plunge onto concrete—

People die falling two meters from a ladder and survive drops over hundreds, and if anyone could figure out how to purposefully pull one over on _gravity_ , Sherlock Holmes—

He couldn’t be, would not be—

“Let me through! Please, let me through, I’m his friend…”

It is when John feels there is no pulse in Sherlock’s still warm wrist. That was it. The bottom falls out of his stomach – though unpleasantly, offensively, his heart continues to beat.

* * *

Sherlock had _not_ been suicidal; John would never be able to find a clue in his behavior over the eighteen months of their association that even suggested as much. Reckless, certainly, but never without reason. What was the reasoning behind _this_?

* * *

Hope has a way of standing in the face of bleak odds. People are brought back from the brink of death and from clinical death on a daily basis in a hospital, and Sherlock was only just outside a very good hospital; that would have been very important, if he’d had any intention of walking away from his landing. More often than not, it takes the solemn pronouncement of a professional to properly starve hope of oxygen, but John has no illusions about the capabilities of the trauma teams at Barts. There is so much blood, and it is all seeping from the head – nose, ears, some unseen wound mercifully hidden beneath blood-soaked hair. It does not take much to keep a heart and lungs running artificially, but there is no life support for the brain, and his is surely destroyed. Merely existing due to the metronomic electrical pulses of machines is not the same as living to a regular person, let alone one like Sherlock Holmes.

He has no hope when Sherlock’s body is piled onto a gurney and rushed inside for triage. Some idiot might try to resuscitate him, but it will be no use. Maybe he was an organ donor, and his heart or kidneys or liver will save someone else’s life – one last, feeble triumph that would never see its due – but Sherlock’s is surely over. 

And John’s is as well, isn’t it? Without Sherlock, he is useless, unneeded, perfectly extraneous. The work at the surgery, his non-relationship with Harry, the dates that Sherlock never interrupted, that is just _existence_. Every part of his life is—was Sherlock.

* * *

Nobody asks him to identify the body, and John doesn’t ask to see it. That would be maudlin, sentimental, and he doesn’t want to be that. Not right now. From a great distance, Barts employees keep asking him if he is all right, are you going to be ill, let’s sit you down, yeah? John tries ignoring them, then gives in when they won’t leave him alone. But he won’t go inside and runs up a staggering meter in a circling taxi before he recognizes he needs to move.

He doesn’t limp that afternoon, walking around and hating how clearly he is able to process everything after the initial moment of shock. It occurs to him that somebody ought to tell Mrs. Hudson, and his hand is in his pocket before John realizes he must have dropped his phone. It’s something that ought to be said in person, anyway, so he goes back to Baker Street when it is too dark to rationalize staying out any longer.

It had been on the news; Mrs. Hudson already knows. She cries on John’s shoulder and he makes her tea. He takes her up on the offer of sleeping on her couch, and sleeps horrendously soundly.

* * *

John wakes with every intention of walking until he can figure out what to do next – he knows what comes next, but he doesn’t want to face it just yet – but is derailed halfway out the door by the realization that his leg hurts. It had felt the normal, natural state of things until John thought about it. Easing himself down the wall onto the floor of the front hall, for the first time, he cries.

* * *

Everybody expects John Watson to be a wreck, and he is for the six days until the interment. He sleeps in a hotel he can’t afford, doesn’t go to work, hardly eats, and stays in bed most of the day, rubbing his thigh and thinking in turns about why, _why_ Sherlock had made him watch him die and the gun in the drawer next to a Gideon Bible. He’s been broken before, and it’s worse the second time. There won’t be another Sherlock to reassemble the shattered pieces that used to be John. He knows he will have to do it himself.

The cab collects him and Mrs. Hudson and takes them in silence to the cemetery. Mycroft isn’t there, which is lucky, as John hadn’t quite decided how he would have reacted. Neither is Lestrade there, and that is the greater slight. John has been to too many funerals already and this is by far the worst; he would have given anything to be anywhere else, but it’s a sign of respect. Sherlock wouldn’t have understood that, but that isn’t the point, is it? It’s just the done thing, and Lestrade ought to have shown that least bit of loyalty.

He’s been working on a speech over the past few days, the things he hadn’t said and can’t say in front of Ella. The granite gravestone is only slightly less responsive than John fancies the man himself would have been.

* * *

He can’t keep doing this. It isn’t healthy. Even worse, it is pitiable. The snide remarks, the insults, the questions of how could he be so stupid – John could stand all that but pity is inexcusable. He is not _willing_ to be broken, to let the single greatest connotation of his all too brief time with Sherlock be loss. It’s impossible to keep from making the mistake of caring, but it will not ruin his ability to do the work.

And there is still work to do. There will always be criminals, but more pressingly, Moriarty still breathes. John has never thought of himself as vengeful, but one way or another, he means to see the end of that. And he’ll have to overcome this hateful depression and existential crisis to do so.

Sherlock might have appreciated that focus, even if he would never have approved of John’s methods.

* * *

John goes back to work; Sarah wisely does not attempt to console him.

It could never be enough, not even before Sherlock, but he only needs the paychecks for a few more weeks.

Probably less; Mycroft is nothing if not formidable.

* * *

John had once gotten an email from his sister right after she and Clara had separated. In the first, bleary moments after the alarm had been silenced, Harry had written, she didn’t remember that Clara wasn’t there. The other side of the bed would be empty and Harry would assume she was downstairs making coffee or just out of sight in the bathroom until it registered that the other pillow was cold and the books that had always been piled on the other nightstand had been replaced by a thin but uniform layer of undisturbed dust. 

In medical school, there had been an elderly, demented woman admitted with a broken hip. Marie had to be reminded at least twice a day that she was in the hospital, and it never stuck. Within a few hours, she would rouse herself from the haze of pain medication and ask for a cigarette, “Just the one before we go. I have to get home before Jerry does, or he’ll worry.” Marie had quit smoking seven years before, after lung cancer killed her husband.

The worst part of it is that John wakes up every morning with the certain knowledge that Sherlock is gone. His brain cannot convince him otherwise when he is on an unfamiliar bed and opens his eyes to the unfamiliar walls of a hotel room.

* * *

Only three days after the burial, unable to bear the thought of someone else making it home, _changing_ things, John goes back to Baker Street. The books go back onto the shelves, the skulls up on the wall and out on the mantelpiece, the violin and music stand arranged expectantly next to the window. 

It’s not a shrine – the things that belonged to Sherlock but hold no warmth for John remain in boxes stored in Sherlock’s bedroom.

Reassembling a facsimile of their old life is less painful than he feels it should be, so John makes up for it with a ruthless cleaning that leaves his back and knees aching.

After the deepest sleep he’s had since that day, John wakes up with a start at a quarter to nine. Groggily, he wonders what Sherlock’s found to occupy his interest that he isn’t looming at the foot of John’s bed, deducing why he’s slept in so late.

The sting is a relief.

* * *

Someone calls his name. There is a very brief lag between his recognition of Lestrade’s voice and remembering that John has not forgiven him. He turns enough to nod curtly, not meeting Lestrade’s eyes, and then jabs the key into the lock with more than the necessary force.

“Can we talk?”

John does not reply, but holds the door open with bad grace. 

Lestrade looks around the living room and visibly swallows some sort of comment about the sameness, or the new orderliness. There is silence as John shucks his coat and marches into the kitchen to make tea. Unwilling to sit in Sherlock’s chair, Lestrade follows him through after a moment, tensely gripping an envelope; John keeps his focus on the kettle.

“Look,” he begins after an awkwardly long pause.

“Sugar?” John takes out the milk and readies two mugs with tea bags.

“No, thanks. John, I know—”

“You did know,” John agrees mildly, pouring the water with steady hands. “You knew he was the real thing, but you didn’t stick up for him.”

Stricken, Lestrade doesn’t pick up the tea set before him on the scarred but spotlessly clean table. “I’m sorry.” 

“I’m sure you are.” John’s gaze is an indictment.

“You got in,” Lestrade announces bleakly, sliding the envelope across the table. “Congratulations.”

“Not due to my personal merits, I’m sure. What else? Come on,” he chides, tapping the Met seal in the return address. “This should have been mailed. Unless you’ve been demoted so far that you’re on courier duty.”

Taking a gulp of the under-steeped tea to stall, Lestrade clears his throat in discomfort. “I haven’t been demoted. I got formally reprimanded and suspended,” he hastily adds, needlessly peremptory. “So, my career’s not going anywhere. Not that—I know it doesn’t matter anymore, but I was trying to minimize the damage. Not just for me.” He’s pleading for acceptance.

John grips the table edge and exhales with forced evenness. His expression strongly recommends Lestrade get back to the purpose for his presence.

“Mycroft didn’t think he’d be welcome here.”

“Neither are you at the moment, but here you are.”

Fed up with playing the part of a flinching toady, Lestrade angrily pushes his tea away. “Look, we’re all sorry for what happened, John, God knows. I never wanted Sherlock dead, or off crime scenes, I just—” He bites off a curse. “There wasn’t anything you or I could do, okay? Mycroft thinks somebody made him jump.”

“Don’t.” The warning is more menacing for being softly spoken. “I know Moriarty did it. I don’t know how, but he did. Sherlock— He wouldn’t. Not without a reason. But don’t you dare try to redeem yourself with that.”

After several long moments of staring, Lestrade nods and looks away. Mollified for the moment, John straightens into a more relaxed posture and sips his tea, waiting for the last of the message.

“Why are you doing this, John? No,” he holds up placatory hands. “It doesn’t matter. Or it’s not any of my business, anyway. But you have to know, everybody knows Sherlock’s name down there. I hope you’re prepared for that.

“Mycroft also said to say he’s glad you’re moving on” – the twist of Lestrade’s mouth betrays what he thinks of that assessment of what John’s doing – “and that he’s your servant. Better yours than mine. But the same goes for me, okay? I’m not asking for forgiveness – really,” he insists when John jerks his head doubtfully. “But if you need somebody to talk to or, or whatever. Give us a ring, yeah?”

He waits, but John doesn’t accept or decline; he doesn’t say or do anything, just looks over toward the empty sitting room. 

Lestrade sighs and steps back, tucking his hands into his pockets in retreat. “Thanks for the tea. I am sorry, John.”

John does not move until after he hears the front door quietly shut. Then he dumps out Lestrade’s undrunk tea and dully sets about washing the second mug.

* * *

At the end of his next shift, John knocks on Sarah’s office door. Her smile slips a little into something more subdued once she remembers John is in mourning.

“John. What can I do for you?”

“I’m handing in my notice.”

“Oh. Okay.” She accepts the envelope automatically and searches John’s face. “Have you got something lined up already, or do you need a reference?”

“I somehow doubt a recommendation from you would improve my CV’s appeal. ‘John slept through most of his first day of work and it was all downhill from there.’” The joke comes easily, for all that it’s patently untrue.

“No, you—” Eyes cast down in guilt, flush, nervous fidgeting of hands: John is certain she was going to say something about his exemplary attendance when his flatmate doesn’t interrupt. “You’re an excellent doctor, John,” she finishes gently. “I’ve never regretted hiring you.”

“Thanks, Sarah. Really. But I don’t think I’m going to continue in medicine.”

“Oh?” Her concern is palpable; she’s been practically itching to put him on suicide watch.

“I’m…retraining,” he hedges. “Sherlock’s brother helped me get a position.”

“You’ve already got yourself sorted, then.” Relieved as much as she is politely pleased on his behalf, Sarah smiles more broadly. “That’s wonderful! When are you leaving?”

“I start Monday after next.”

“Still in London?”

The small talk is almost absurd in the Sherlock-shaped hole Sarah’s intentionally skirting. John feels a strong urge to yank her into the omission, and wantonly submits to it. “I’m staying at Baker Street, yes.”

“Well, that’s, that’s very… We’re certainly going to miss you, but I’m sure you’ve made the right decision for you.”

“Yes.” John cannot wait to be shot of this conversation.

Sarah stands up and starts to round the desk, but then changes her mind about the propriety of hugging him and offers a handshake instead. “Keep in touch, let us know how you’re doing every now and again. We—I wish all the best for you. It’s been a pleasure working with you, John.”

To his immense relief, there is no further acknowledgement that John is leaving from anyone at the practice. It’s a clean break he doesn’t intend to revisit.

* * *

John cannot explain it, so he doesn’t tell anyone. He always waits until Mrs. Hudson goes out before taking Sherlock’s violin up to his room and locking the door behind him. It starts with several minutes of just holding the instrument, stroking the wood with just the pads of his fingers – he always polishes it before putting it away – and thumbing the strings too gently to produce any sound. Not nearly as often as he expects he should, John cries, and takes care not to put the varnish in danger of saltwater stains.

As soon as the veneration starts to feel silly, he opens the practice book and a French-English dictionary and laboriously teaches himself the violin.

After three months of furtive lessons, John thinks it’s time. Early on a frigid Saturday morning, he goes back to the cemetery.

As he had predicted, it is virtually deserted – and he only refrains from calling it completely deserted to save himself a shock if someone does show up. The frosted grass squeaking under his shoe soles is the only sound in the crisp air other than his controlled breathing. A short carpet of manicured green has overtaken the voided area in front of the headstone, but the relative thinness of the growth faintly echoes the shape of a recent arrival. Eventually, it will be indistinguishable from the other grass, and hundreds of days of rain will leave the sleek polish of the stone mottled and dulled by water stains, and it will appear that Sherlock Holmes’s grave has always belonged there; the thought of watching that slow process unfolding over years hollows John out.

“Hello, Sherlock.” It feels silly to say out loud, forced out around a sudden lump in his throat. They had never really greeted each other in person, or even over the phone. Maybe John had adhered to social conventions for a bit in the very early days, but it had never seemed necessary with Sherlock. There had been no point in pleasantries with someone like him. Not between the two of them.

“I thought about getting you flowers, but there didn’t seem a reason to if you weren’t going to berate me for being boring and then distill something foul-smelling and potentially lethal out of them. I’m sure you can tell from – I don’t know – the way I tied my shoes or the newness of my razor, but I left the surgery. You’d have been pleased. Um,” John blinks away some tears, irrationally embarrassed to be crying in front of Sherlock.

“I’m—I’m actually working for the Met. That is, I will be. Just training now, but Mycroft’s easing my way to AFO certification. I know, I’m not chuffed about it either, but I needed—I need to keep busy. Distracted.” Sherlock could understand that.

He shifts his weight and gives in to the hurt. “And it’s your fault. It is. Maybe you wouldn’t have…” John’s breath rattles on the sharp inhale. “Maybe you wouldn’t have done this if you knew it would drive me into your brother’s arms. There’s always something, though,” he remembers with a brittle smile.

Switching hands holding the violin case, John pulls the primer from inside his jacket to show Sherlock. “Found this. Probably didn’t even know you had it. At first, I thought it was proof you cared. A childhood memento.” He smooths the corner, napped and dog-eared from being wedged onto an overcrowded shelf, sending a tiny fragment of yellowed paper fluttering down into the grass. 

“But I think you just forgot you had it and whoever packed your things – I know it wasn’t you, lazy berk – they kept it following you. Hard to imagine you young. But not really; sometimes you were very young.”

When he’d seen John at the pool. After their argument in Dartmoor. 

“So.” He wishes he could have brought the music stand, but it would have been awkward to carry. After some deliberation, John carefully balances the book on the sloped top of Sherlock’s tombstone. Thankfully, a stiff breeze does not worsen the chill in the air.

“Here we are, still. I’m furious with you for that. Not once could you do something I wanted, could you?” The bow doesn’t feel natural in his hand, but it is familiar now as he gets his grip right.

“You can wipe that smug look right off your face, though. I’ve worked out the perfect revenge; I have your violin and I’m going to play it. Horribly. And you’ll just have to—lay there.”

A strangled shriek from the violin reminds John that he didn’t want to disturb anyone with his catharsis. The graveyard is just as empty as it was when he arrived; satisfied, John draws the bow more viciously across the strings. Noise isn’t enough to make Sherlock take notice, though. That’s why John has been trying to learn: not to be any good, but to make it obvious how much effort he’s putting forth. Nothing annoys Sherlock more than people doing something exceedingly poorly with all their might. 

John can imagine Sherlock seizing up in offense as he begins ponderously working his way through scales. The strings must be out of tune, too, but John hadn’t bothered to decode that passage out of the French music book. It isn’t as though he can tell the difference between tuned and not, but Sherlock definitely could. He would have leapt off the couch and vaulted across the table to wrest the instrument away from John’s torturous embrace before the end of the first scale. 

Smiling under the abuse Sherlock bellows inside his head, John moves into finger exercises.

* * *

When John asked Mycroft to get him into the police service, he knew it was irregular. It was illegal as well, but that seemed less imperative than doing what he needed to do. Not wanting to go through a painful, exposing conversation, he had fallen back on the habits of an officer and simply ordered. Even through the stunted medium of a text, the tone brooked no discussion. Lestrade’s visit had been the only reply.

Inside the envelope had been a copy of a forged IPDLP diploma – apparently, John had been training in Scotland during his residency at the Royal Centre for Defense Medicine, which was possible on paper but certainly not in practice the way John remembers it, – a transfer request dated on Sherlock’s death, and confirmation for an appointment with his new superior officer the next week. 

Sergeant Ellickson is not someone John remembers meeting through the consulting, but based on the fine sheen of sweat on his upper lip, he seems painfully aware of the unique circumstances. Inattentive, John wastes time speculating what Mycroft is holding over Ellickson’s head.

Unsurprisingly, he approves John’s request to try for firearms certification.

It takes nearly another month to finish his requisite interviews, psychological and physical evaluations, and written assessments. Nobody questions his purported police training, and John isn’t sure whether that was due to complacency, Mycroft’s influence, or his own, medical school-induced capacity for cramming. Sometimes, lying in bed and wishing sleep came more easily, John wonders if he is half-hoping to get caught in the lie. But nobody connects his name to Sherlock’s.

The day before he reports to the Training Centre, John gets a haircut. He did the same when he entered OTC and when he shipped out, both the first and second times. In the mirror, there’s a soldier again – older and greyer again, but no less capable for it.

As expected, he is significantly above the average age of the trainees. Most are fresh from their mandatory two years of police duties, which John has neatly sidestepped, but a few are more senior veterans. His military training, though, gives him a head start over all of them when they begin with the Glock 17.

After the pistol, they move on to a Heckler & Koch MP5. It’s smaller and lighter than the rifle he saw in the service, but the gun oil smells the same. John had been worried that he might have flashbacks or a resurgence of nightmares about the war, but it’s difficult to confuse a practically antiseptic practice range and simulation courses with the tang and grit of the real thing.

He spends sixteen hours a day for a week in close company with the group. The instructors are good and they don’t leave much time for chatting. During lunch the second day, one of the boys – sandy haired and gangly with a comically wide jaw – asks about his experience; John truthfully tells him that the majority of his time in the police was spent overseas in the Medical Corps. Huw is too distracted by the war stories to recognize the glaringly obvious discrepancy between John’s claim and the requirements to be in their program. Sherlock would have interrupted to loudly proclaim his despair at the next generation.

* * *

People don’t remember John Watson in connection with that detective who turned out to be a fraud. Sometimes, John wishes he had the courage to remind them of Sherlock, but he knows that he doesn’t have incontrovertible evidence. So, he waits, with Mrs. Hudson as company, patient in his certainty that someone will find the proof that he cannot. 

If only Sherlock were around, it wouldn’t take more than a week.

* * *

The AFO ticket is a small stamp on John’s fictional police record. To him, it looks like the stylization at the top of a new chapter.

With it, he applies for the Specialist Firearms Command. He considers telling Mycroft to back off and leave it up to an honest assessment of his aptitude, but in for a penny, in for a pound. Anyway, he can’t think of a reason why they wouldn’t accept him.

Superintendent Mullur – of a height with John, balding more on the crown of his head than the pate, blue hearts on his knobby socks (hand craft: likely has a daughter) – goes over John’s training synopsis during the interview. He’s impressed with his military career but quickly catches what Huw missed.

“Your service record is quite thin.”

A vague smile: “It was a quiet town.”

“I’d take your word for it, I’m sure it’s carefully researched, but there’s no need.” Muller leans back, assessing. “My brother went through medical school, Doctor Watson.”

John’s heart beats painfully sharply, and he doesn’t know if it’s a thrill of fear or a thrill of excitement. “What’s his specialty?”

With a fleeting grin, Mullur flips the file shut. “He’s a GP in Yorkshire. Why don’t you tell me why you’re trying to illegally become a police officer.”

“There’s no point now.” But Mullur tips his head thoughtfully, so John does not get up to leave.

“No, there could be. Because I know you, Doctor Watson. I’ve heard of you. You worked with Sherlock Holmes. Never met him myself but I’ve heard the horror stories.” It’s stated baldly, brusque almost to the point of callousness. After months of hushed tones and delicate tiptoeing around the chalk outline, polite indifference is almost a relief.

“Your military career seems real. Your medical training seems real. As far as I can tell, the only thing that isn’t real is your police training.”

Unable to deny or add to that appraisal, John stays silent. 

Mullur leans forward to rest on his elbows. “Did you take your own evaluations?”

“Yes.”

“And the firearms training.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

John blinks. Isn’t it obvious? “I can’t go back to the military. I can’t go back to surgery. I worked closely with the police and I want to continue doing so with the skills I learned in the Army.” It sounds plausible, anyway.

He tries to keep his face neutral under Superintendent Mullur’s searching gaze. The latter is the first to drop his eyes, shuffling the papers on his desk without purpose. “You passed every test with flying colors, Doctor Watson. But your history has been falsified. Not only does that disqualify you from this organization, it is almost certainly criminal.”

Stilling his hands by clasping them neatly together, Mullur looks up, expressionless. “Tell me I’m wrong.”

Mutely, John shakes his head.

“Good.” Mullur nods once. “I’m not going to put you on a team. You’ll have a six month probation as a weapons instructor, and then we’ll have this conversation again. Transfer should be finalized within a week. Dismissed.”

Stunned, John stands automatically. “Sir,” he begins questioningly.

“I can guess why you’re here, Watson,” Mullur cuts him off briskly. “I can’t recommend your process and I don’t want to know who did this for you, but I’d rather overlook the obvious than have you a loose cannon. Dismissed.”

So, Mycroft didn’t intimidate this one directly, but had the incredible prescience to find someone familiar with John’s short-lived fame and then present him with an evident counterfeit, secure in the confidence that he would be sympathetic. It is not a reassuring insight.

* * *

There are days John thinks he should get rid of his illegal Sig. It would never have been good to get caught with it, but the liability feels heavier now that he’s technically a peacekeeper.

He utterly fails to surprise himself by keeping it.

* * *

When John realizes he’s lost fifteen pounds in spite of increased muscle mass, he decides it’s time to go back to Angelo’s. Not particularly hungry but determined to actually eat the food, he asks for something light; Angelo brings back a bowl of pasta primavera and no candle. He spends most of the meal thinking churlishly at the other diners bound to be speculating on a man eating out alone.

Knowing Angelo still won’t let him pay, John leaves twenty pounds under the bowl of now cold tagliatelle he couldn’t finish and figures that at least the busboy will get a nice tip.

As he leaves, Angelo forces a whole tray of half-cooked eggplant lasagna into John’s hands. “You’re starting to look like Sherlock was when I met him. Too thin, never looking down to enjoy what he’s eating. That’s not the way to remember him.”

John carries both the reproach and the pan back to Baker Street, staring at the heating instructions on the foil without seeing them. Getting ready for bed, he pulls up his shirt and dispassionately examines his ribs in the bathroom mirror; he can’t afford to lose mass when he’s already shorter than most of his trainees, some of whom outrank him. 

The food sits uncomfortably solid inside him all the same.

* * *

After a while, nursing his grudge against Lestrade seems more foolish than principled. Sherlock might have thought himself above such limitations, but the police do have procedures for a reason. He can even recognize that Sally was only doing her job, even if her suspicion was honed by personal dislike. Notwithstanding that magnanimity, John cannot keep from passionately despising her.

He never intended for his first conversation with Lestrade in months to be a wake, but it ended up one all the same.

“Heard you’re with the blue berets now.”

“Good to know you’re all talking behind my back.” 

Greg shrugs helplessly – the lulls between surges in crime can only be filled so many ways. John finds he doesn’t feel any more annoyed by being the subject of gossip than he would have been two years ago.

“Yeah, I am. Mullur, do you know him? Indian, balding, at least one daughter—well, he’s my superior. I like him. He figured out I hadn’t done initial training and still hired me.”

“There’s one in every department,” Lestrade comments with a wry toast to himself.

“I’m pretty sure he thought I would go stark, raving mad if he didn’t.”

“That’s at least half of why I put up with Sherlock.” He doesn’t appear to immediately regret invoking Sherlock’s name jokingly, so John obliges to chuckle.

“Anyway, I’m just training for a six month probation and then Mullur might let me on a proper team. It’s steady work, at least. I can almost afford Baker Street on my own.”

“You know Mycroft’s still paying the half, don’t you?”

“I thought he must be; Mrs. Hudson hasn’t had me evicted. How’d you know?” In fact, Lestrade seems to know rather a lot that could only have come from direct communication with the surviving Holmes, but John has only known Mycroft to part with information like he would internal organs. Except, of course, when it was Moriarty asking.

“He knew you weren’t talking to me” – they share a brief moment of silent commiseration over the fantasy of privacy – “and I was—well, he’s been giving me biweekly updates.” Lestrade considers the dregs at the bottom of his pint. “No offense, but I think the best that could come of us talking is that I never hear from him again.”

John can sympathize with the notion, but he’s also been on the other side of it and shakes his head. “I can’t believe I’m saying this. Incredibly, not hearing from him is almost worse. It’s like waiting for exam results, magnified about a million times over and highlighted by the urgency of a hostage situation, and you’re the hostage.” 

Neither of them has drunk nearly enough beer for that metaphor to be intelligible, but it does capture the essence of dealing with Mycroft. A few minutes pass in reminiscence of their first kidnappings – Lestrade got a car park rather than a warehouse, but the umbrella seems a constant fixture – and getting a fresh round. 

“Did you ever try just shouting at him?” Greg asks when he comes back, and John bursts out laughing at the image of the two of them bellowing obscenities at a serene Mycroft. “Yeah, it’s funny in retrospect! At the time, I thought I was going to have a coronary from how high my blood pressure got. Poncey git didn’t even have the decency to look annoyed, just waited politely like I was reciting “The Charge of the Light Brigade.””

The only time Mycroft has ever looked less than wholly control of the conversation was when he apologized for selling Sherlock out. John purposefully chokes on too large a mouthful to disguise his abrupt sobering.

“But he’s not so bad,” Lestrade grants.

“What, Mycroft?”

“I mean, I wouldn’t want to be his _mate_.” He waves a defensive hand. “You know, he’s—he was always looking out for Sherlock. Wouldn’t give a fig about you or me if Sherlock hadn’t decided we were tolerable. It’s almost, almost _nice_ , if you account for the fact they’re both barmy and only act like regular humans when needs absolutely must.”

“Yeah, I suppose.”

“I think that’s why he’s still looking out for you and Mrs. Hudson. Rent, the job – indirect care because Sherlock doesn’t—Sherlock never wanted it.”

That was a step too far, and Greg knows it as soon as the words leave his mouth. The awkward silence spirals dangerously. But leaving it that way would defeat the purpose of this meeting, so John exhales deeply and lets it go.

“I wouldn’t have anything to do with him, but he doesn’t know the meaning of the word ‘no,’ and I’d prefer to know exactly what he’s doing.”

Greg is plainly relieved, which gives John a tiny rush of satisfaction at his own generosity, and the conversation drifts before inevitably returning to Sherlock.

“Going to keep up with your blog?”

“No,” John shakes his head vehemently. “At least not now. I can’t write about anything new now I’m bound, same as you, and there are a lot of things I didn’t have the time to write down before, but I don’t want to publish them until he’s cleared.”

“But you’ve already written them?”

Some nights he can’t get to sleep. He shrugs. “Some of the private cases and the weirder experiments; one’s just the unbelievable things he said.”

Lestrade hums sympathetically. “You know, the first time I met him, he told me that humanity could be drastically improved by finding a way to keep a brain perpetually alive in a jar and interfaced completely with computers. That was both the most entertaining and most terrifying booking session I’ve ever experienced, and that includes that cannibal we arrested three years ago. And he’d never seen _The Matrix_ , but he was properly miffed when I told him someone else had thought of it first and everyone agreed it was not a good direction.”

“God, you could never watch a movie in the same room with him.” He thought he’d like _Silence of the Lambs_ but, it turns out, hatred of psychology trumps interest in gory murder. John scrubs a hand across his eyes with a groan. “I just can’t—I knew him less than two years and it feels like so much longer. I could fill books with the things we did – that he did and I happened to be there to see. But the ending…” 

Biting the inside of his cheek, he taps his fist lightly against the sticky tabletop. “The ending doesn’t make sense. Not to me.”

There is nothing Greg can say to that, and he doesn’t try. It’s enough to mourn companionably. 

“Sorry,” John clears his throat. “I didn’t—”

“It’s fine. Really, whatever you need.”

As they’re leaving, Greg fumbles with his jacket. John tarries as well, to give him a chance to say whatever it is obviously on his mind.

“Look, John.” Inside his pocket, he nervously juggles his keys. “I hope you know—”

“Greg,” John cuts him off firmly. “I don’t forgive what you did, okay? There’s just no point in being angry about it anymore. Alright?”

Greg is willing to live with that, and John thinks that it is only fair that he has to.

* * *

A woman at the bank flirts with him, very aggressive for the situation. John catches sight of the article she’s reading on her phone – three mentions of conception and two of fertility on that tiny screen: obviously wants to get pregnant _now_ – and goes to harangue Sherlock for managing to cockblock him even in death. 

It’s a short visit; he has to leave before he says out loud how lonely he is.

* * *

A year less nine days After, John wants to tell Sherlock something important. To not have some revelation or interesting thought after so long seems wasteful. He can only imagine Sherlock’s face at the prospect of going even one month without doing something extraordinary.

But John is completely, crushingly ordinary without his influence, and all he can offer are the latest personal trivia and a poorly played violin recital. Still, he knows he’ll feel more fulfilled from this than he will from the anniversary visit with Mrs. Hudson. He should probably invite Greg as well, and maybe Molly. They could make a proper party of it, just to annoy Sherlock.

On second thought, the others might not feel comfortable with his method of coping.

“And that was a terrible rendition of something by Tchaikovsky. Even if it was recognizable, I know you hate him.” He points the bow accusingly at the stone and grins at the thought of how mad he would look to anyone passing by. There hardly ever is, though; if he was given to conspiracy theories, he might suspect Mycroft of bribing other mourners away.

“Did I tell you that Mycroft went to see Lestrade again? If he isn’t trying to make me talk to him out of compassion, I think he must have a crush.” He’s smiling as he resettles his cheek on the chinrest, but he can’t think of anything else to play. After scraping the bow aimlessly across the strings for a while, he reluctantly replaces the instrument to its case; it’s more difficult to stay when he has no contrived reason to be there.

“Almost a year, Sherlock. Am I supposed to have figured it out by now?” John still refuses to believe that there isn’t some sort of logic to this. Crouching down, he pulls a few blades of grass out by their roots – a tiny revenge against time. 

“Why can’t you just tell me? You love showing off but now you’re content to sit there and let me puzzle through it at a snail’s pace? Not even a condescending hint?” 

Around and around, John’s had this conversation with his ghosts over and over again, but there’s never any answer. There must be something he’s missing, some scrap of evidence that will make it all obvious. He didn’t have enough time to practice Sherlock’s methods, and now he’s failing the test.

Scattering the shredded leaves to conceal his defacement, John rises to leave. Sherlock won’t even notice he’s gone until he comes back.


	2. Protonation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warnings for mentions of human trafficking, slavery, and allusions to sexual predation and noncon.

He hasn’t had sex in more months than he cares to admit. For a while, it was a non-issue – Ella would have diagnosed the erectile dysfunction as a symptom of PTSD, but she’s a known idiot. Now that he wakes up hard at least every other morning, though, it’s difficult to ignore the fact that he hasn’t known anything except his increasingly boring hand for a long, long time; he has gone through an obscene amount of lotion.

The problem is that he isn’t young enough to do the one-night stand thing and he doesn’t have the time or energy to devote to looking for a committed relationship. When he tries to be analytical about it, the only solution is a prostitute, but that is so many miles from worth the risk – both professional and medical – that he can only laugh at himself for even considering it.

So, after work, he eats Sunday dinners with Mrs. Hudson, texts Greg, practices the violin, and sleeps alone, with a new bottle of proper lube in his nightstand.

* * *

“Watson.”

Even now, John has to restrain himself from saluting and instead nods curtly. “Sir.”

Even with the distraction of being observed, Tillick reassembles his rifle well within the required time. He’s one of the best of this batch, which is an achievement, considering they are all veterans in for requalification. It’s mostly a formality, but John has failed several constables out of their certification.

Tillick leaves, the last of the day. Mullur waits patiently at parade rest while John locks the gun case.

“I expected you to be in my office the minute your six months were up,” he comments as they walk out.

“I was in the middle of a module,” John points out.

After contemplating this, Mullur offers, “You don’t have to deploy.”

“I want to.”

A raised eyebrow is Mullur’s only comment on the intensity of his insistence. “I’d recommend waiting until after your second round of retesting. Orman’ll have a spot after Guillory transfers to SEG.”

“Yes, sir.”

“On your way to SFO training, then?” he guesses shrewdly. “Not a difficult leap. Man who trains in medicine and then immediately jumps into the military is looking for a challenge.” Very deferentially, he does not mention the obvious appetite for danger.

“I just want to be useful.”

Mullur makes a noise that could be noncommittal or disbelieving, but lets the statement stand. “There’s no hard and fast rule about ARV experience, but I’ll tell you now that I’m not approving training until you’ve had at least six months, and I’d prefer a year.”

“I’m finding I’m good at waiting, sir.” He doesn’t like it, but he can do it.

“See me when you’ve gotten tested.” Nodding once, Mullur claps him briskly on the shoulder in farewell. “Doctor Watson.”

“Sir.”

He hasn’t been called by his medical title in a while, John muses on the tube home. It felt strange and ill fitting from the headspace of a soldier. At least only Mullur calls him that.

* * *

Mrs. Hudson has not given up on renting out 221C, though she pursues it with marked lack of vigor. Knowing full well that she could be renting out 221B at a much higher rate if he left as he should do, John takes it upon himself to help her fix up the place. They stand in the dank basement, trying to figure out what needs to be done and where to start, and it becomes painfully clear that the only thing for it is to start over.

When Mycroft calls, John deigns to reply by text that they’ll do it themselves, thanks.

He’s less annoyed than he expected to be when he discovers that, predictably, a demolition crew has come to tear out the moldering drywall and insulation while he was at work. Mrs. Hudson thinks John arranged it, and he decides the truth is more trouble than it’s worth. In a text that is astonishingly smug for how few words it contains, Mycroft tells John what time the crew will be in the next day to finish demolition in the kitchen and that he’ll gladly send copies of the paid bills to John.

John relays only the first half of this message to Mrs. Hudson.

“Oh, I’ll have to make a little something for their lunch, then. I wish you had told me they were coming today; I was so flustered, and I had barely enough tea bags for them all. I’ll have to go by the shop tomorrow morning.”

“There’s tea in the cupboard,” John volunteers, knowing she’ll thank him and buy her own, anyway.

“That’s nice of you, dear,” she pats him maternally on the arm. “I’d have raided your kitchen next, but I had just enough and I’ll get to Tesco tomorrow. Do you need anything?”

“No, that’s alright.”

He does, but it doesn’t seem right to make her do his shopping when John is more than capable. Her hip is more of a talking point than an actual disability, but all the same, his doctorly inclination won’t allow him to impose on her kindness. Even shunting his responsibility to her onto Mycroft feels dishonest.

Another beep from his phone: _Rebuilding Saturday at 9. Might be a bit slow going; only three of the four available._ Bloody Holmeses and their clairvoyance. Hopefully, Mycroft has only let the fourth man go in the traditional, non-fatal sense of the term. 

“You should start looking at wallpaper and such; the construction crew will be in on Saturday morning.”

“This Saturday!” Mrs. Hudson gasps, starting theatrically. “Already! Oh, I wish you had been here when we did the new plumbing. Six weeks we had to wait for that, and he left a mess, too!”

A vague hum is all the encouragement she needs to start telling him all the remodeling horror stories she knows, both by experience and through hearsay, and John lets her chatter wash over him. It’s not quite home, but it’s a nice reminder of it.

* * *

Chief Inspector Brian Orman is ridiculously tall – at least six-four – and possessed of enormous hands. John resolutely tries not to think about how his own hand looks like a child’s when they shake through the introduction.

“Afghanistan, Mullur said?”

“Yes, sir. Two tours.” How much else had Mullur let Orman in on?

“Dakko’s been, as well.” Orman waves broadly toward the armored vehicles around which several other members of the team are milling, and adds drily, “But based on his behavior, I’m sure the Crown was glad when he no longer represented them abroad.” 

The words sound like marbles in his sonorous vowels as Orman efficiently outlines more explicitly John’s new position. There are nine men on the squad, three to each vehicle: driver, navigator, and observer. Guillory had been the observer for his team, and John is confident his time running interference for Sherlock has prepared him for liaising and deciding to call for backup. Roald Dakko – dark hair and eyes, constant sly smile tempered by cavernous dimples; cocky but quick and capable – is the driver and Patrick O’Mahoney – physically squared and thickly accented; categorically dependable – is the navigator.

Sommer, Gutnik, Davidson, Coombe, Reubens, and Cothi man the other two vehicles. This last is the dreadfully young Huw Cothi with whom John trained for his certification, and who grins with unabashed enthusiasm when he sees John. His friendly enquiry brings out that John’s been overseeing retesting and requalification; Orman forestalls the ensuing good-natured ribbing with the pointed reminder that he will make them run drills in the afternoon’s forecasted rain if they haven’t already been done.

It does start drizzling before they’ve finished. The other men have a comfortable working rhythm into which John mindfully injects himself. Even easier with Huw unselfconsciously pulling him into the conversation is slipping into the easy, fraternal sense of community John had experienced in the Army. With it, he doesn’t have to be quite as good, quite as strong, quite as clever, because there are others ready and able to pick up the slack, just as he can do for them.

* * *

“You’d hate them,” John conversationally assures Sherlock. “But they’re good—well, maybe you’d like Orman well enough. You’d tolerate him, anyway. He’s a bit like you. Although a bit more _earthy_ in expressing his displeasure with our deficiencies; cursed a blue streak on my first call. You were much more creative in insulting my intelligence.”

But Orman does hold his own admirably for a mere mortal.

After work stories, John moves on to the disaster area downstairs.

“I guess it’s good Mycroft’s respecting my decision to opt out, but now I’m too bloody-minded to admit that it’s absolute shite to rebuild a whole flat from scratch by myself, drowning in the endless cups of tea Mrs. Hudson keeps bringing, and knowing he’s sitting in the Diogenes smugger than a cat in a birdcage. And I feel bad about making her wait for me when they could have probably got it finished by now, but…well.”

It still smacks of betrayal to ask Mycroft for anything.

“Obviously, I wouldn’t dream of touching the plumbing or the electric. I didn’t like the idea of bugs in the U-bend and Mycroft’s goons tracking when the lights go on and off, but I’m not going to live there, so I figure he didn’t bother. But now it’s just me and Greg reading _Home Renovation for Dummies_ and trying to put up drywall on our third beers. You can imagine.”

After finishing the French lesson book, John had looked through the rest of Sherlock’s things for something more advanced, but all he found were original compositions. Even if he had the competency to be able to perform them, he would never mangle Sherlock’s own works just for a hollow revenge.

The few he’d looked at in music shops were vulgar – full color pictures and digital extras ensconced between shiny covers illustrated with beaming children toting their child-sized violins. Eventually, he’d Googled the publisher of the French book and found one of the higher-level primers at online auction. It isn’t the next in sequence, but he’s struggling through it all the same.

Taking advantage of what is no doubt a very short lapse in the constant drizzle, though, John hadn’t brought the fragile folios along with the violin. He has several short pieces committed to memory, and even if he has improved, the repetition will be enough to annoy Sherlock.

As John adjusts the camber of the bow, he catches sight of a woman in an oversized, arrestingly red coat. She has been here before – possibly more often than John, if the number of times he has happened to see her on his own, irregularly timed visits is any indication – and never fails to amuse him with her outsized coat. Whoever she mourns, his or her grave is far enough away from Sherlock’s that John does not feel badly as he begins to play, although he is glad that he knows the song well enough to make it sound better than a syphilitic cat in heat.

Sherlock must know what John is thinking now. He would sneer, but the idea of celibacy has never appealed to John and been practiced only with extreme reluctance. If he didn’t still like her, John would go to Sarah. Maybe it would be one night, maybe it would linger, but he was not right for her before; how could he subject her to his new self? She deserves better.

The ditty he’s playing comes to an abrupt, shrieking halt. “Piss off,” he snaps, and absolutely will not feel guilty for saying _that_ to Sherlock.

* * *

John breaks a mug. It is his favorite mug, the one with the RAMC coat of arms that Harry bought him after his first tour, which Sherlock had used, in spite of John’s protestations, as a makeshift mortar after he knocked his off the table in a mad dash to catch a serial rapist and couldn’t be arsed to replace it. Eventually, John had caved and bought a new set with his own money, but Sherlock had claimed that the mug was far superior for having a handle.

The top of the piece that used to be the bottom of the mug has lost its glazing and been worn slightly concave. John must remind himself that it would be monumentally ridiculous to keep a useless sherd of distressed crockery before he can throw it away.

He buys a new one because he has to completely get rid of the old one. It’s white with wide blue stripes, feels comfortable in his hand, and, purely by coincidence, has a well that is curiously curved at the bottom rather than strictly cylindrical.

* * *

The bloody forecast isn’t worth a thimbleful of warm piss and now, no thanks to some tit in front of a green screen, the lesson book is getting all wavy from the water. John contemplates a warm iron with a grimness that, in a detached way, even he knows is disproportionate to the situation. 

It feels like a downpour that might be short-lived and he wants to tell Sherlock about his last call-out – the target, who would otherwise have spent a mere three years in prison, slashed Sommer with a knife, giving John an excuse to shoot him in the lung – so John waits beneath the stone archway, carefully separating the pages so the book can dry out more quickly.

“Rotten luck, isn’t it?” With her hands shoved into her coat pockets, she nods out at the rain. “But it’s good for the flowers, at least.”

There are no flowers in the graveyard except for one bouquet that has turned brown and droopy.

She sees him notice this and cringes. “I meant flowers in the general sense. Sorry, I didn’t want to stand here in awkward silence pretending I didn’t see you. I panicked. But it can’t get any worse, right?”

“Oh, I can think of a few ways, but I doubt you can pull any of them off.”

“You underestimate my abilities.” They smile at each other and she edges a bit closer, looking at the damp sheet music in his hands. “Are you a musician? I’ve heard you playing before.”

“No, I—I just learned, actually.”

“Well, you’re very good as far as I can tell. I know nothing about music.”

“I don’t really, either. I prefer words in my music, but… The person I come to—well, he was a musician. Really fantastic violinist.”

“And you learned to play for him? That’s so beautiful.” She even puts an earnest hand over her heart.

“No, we aren’t— _I’m_ not— Actually, I do it to annoy him. Every time I come here, I am making him furious that I’m touching his precious violin and ruining it with my pitiful attempts to play it.” 

She blinks. John instantly regrets saying that to someone he has to be around for the foreseeable future or else risk the Strad and the primer to more rain, and then she laughs. Her chin is slightly asymmetrical, making it look like her head is winsomely cocked in perpetuity.

“I mean it!”

“I know you do, I just thought it was funny. Sorry, I shouldn’t laugh.”

“No, go ahead, I know it’s silly.”

“It’s not silly if it makes you feel better. Does it make you feel better?”

It makes him feel more in control, like he can manage standing at his best friend’s grave. “Not really, but I don’t know what would.”

She nods sympathetically and looks out at the rain in embarrassed silence. He wants to know why she wears that distracting red coat when it doesn’t even fit her properly.

“I’m John,” he blurts out. “Since it looks like we’re going to be here a while.”

“Mary.”

Mary smiles and extricates her hand from the folds of her coat to shake his.

“I’ve seen you around here before. I always wondered, who is that woman in red?”

Mary glances down at her clothes and groans. “God, I wear it all the time, don’t I? Would you believe I lost a bet?”

“No, it’s not bad, just really noticeable. Memorable.”

There’s a silver brooch shaped like a coiled dragon on one of her lapels, and he wonders if it has always been there and he just couldn’t see, or if she changes it out regularly. Then he observes the fabric is warped around a small stretched-out patch caused by repeated pressing and pulling of pins, and he knows.

She’s tugging at the baggy sides and shrugging sheepishly. “I saw pictures of this runway show in Paris and all the models were wearing these huge coats and then right after that, I found it in a consignment shop and it looked exactly like them and it was really cheap. I blame horrible timing and unrealistic expectations.”

“Not unrealistic.” The words are out of his mouth before he thinks them through. Mary assesses him and must not be too offended by the forwardness or the inappropriate setting because she grins and ducks her head in self-deprecating bashfulness.

“And your playing isn’t pitiful, so there you are.”

The rain tapers off, and they go their separate ways. With only his few memorized songs to play, John’s visit is shorter than usual. Mary is still at her grave when he turns to leave, and it would be too awkward to wait for her; he can only imagine Sherlock’s reaction if he pretended he had more to say than he did for the sake of whiling away the time. Already, he can hear the condescending analysis of John’s first attempt at flirtation in more than a year.

“Good luck running this one off, mate.” He’ll probably never speak to her again, anyway.

* * *

“John!” Mary jogs a few feet before slowing to a brisk walk and waves the somewhat bedraggled bouquet in her hand to fill the time until she gets close enough to speak at normal volumes. “It is John, isn’t it? I didn’t make that up?”

“Yes, it’s John. John Watson.” He automatically extends his hand before remembering they’ve already done this bit. She notices and switches the flowers into her other hand to take his with an airy chuckle.

“Mary Morstan, since we’re doing this properly.”

“If you insist. In my head, you were Mary the model.”

“Oh, that’s just _bad_. Honestly, really terrible.”

Cringing internally, he shrugs. “I tried.”

She just laughs – even his teammates aren’t this lighthearted and cheery around him, and they don’t know he’s in mourning – and tugs a tulip out of her arrangement. “For your violinist.”

John thanks her, doesn’t know how to explain that it’s not like that. Her brooch is a silver ship with swollen sails today.

“What will you be playing today, then?”

“Some modern composer I think Sherlock once said he hated. Well, when I say he said it; he hurled the computer at the wall and ranted for an hour about the degeneration of musical appreciation.”

“Oh. Quite the character. It, um.” She fiddles with her flowers, eyebrows firming in determination. “I know it’s none of my business, but do you mean the detective Sherlock Homes?”

“ _Holmes_.”

“Oh. Right. But it is—I’m sorry, this is really none of my business. I’m just going to—” She waves vaguely and moves quickly down the passage.

The righteous anger burning inside his chest is suddenly unnecessary. Was it ever necessary? She only knew his name, which doesn’t mean anything except that she reads the newspapers and has a good memory. John sighs and looks between the violin case and the tulip in his hands.

“Mary. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have reacted like that.”

He hates that she holds the bouquet in front of herself like a shield when she turns back.

“It’s fine, really. It was a very personal question and it—It must have been very hard for you. To go through that.”

“It—yes, it has been. But that’s no excuse for being rude.”

“Oh, I don’t know.” Mary smiles tentatively.

This misstep is somehow more than all the others. He cannot allow it to always be like this, cannot push away everybody new just because they can’t know what’s missing. To Mary’s eyes, he must seem relatively whole.

“I’m sorry,” he repeats, because there is nothing else he can say. “Thank you for the tulip. I’ll just, um.”

“It’s my neice.” She pushes her windblown hair back to keep from further bruising the petals; there’s something important in her gaze. “Who I come to see, I mean. She was ten. Osteosarcoma that metastasized to her lungs.”

Not uncommon with pediatric bone cancer. It’s easy to write the fatigue and soreness off as growing pains or the result of vigorous play. “I’m so sorry. When did it happen? If you don’t mind my asking.”

“No, of course.” Her boot scuffs on the flagstones and she sniffles a little. “It’s been almost two years. My sister – she can’t. I just didn’t want her to get lonely.”

John has to set down the violin case to take her into his arms and he does it without hesitation; Mary lets him hold her but ducks her head and hides her tears in one hand. The wool of her coat is softened with age and the purple tulip still in his hand looks particularly vibrant against the red field.

* * *

They go out on two dates before she takes him home. Before each one he masturbated, just in case, so it wouldn’t be over too quickly.

He likes the dark roots coming in against her bleached blonde hair, and she doesn’t mind the ugly stippling on his shoulder.

It’s more than just enough.

* * *

Dakko counts the number of calls he’s been on, and the house in Westminster is his one hundred and thirty-eighth. It’s technically a drugs bust, but all the intelligence is that several mid-level lieutenants in the imaginatively named Cartel meet there to play poker. Compared to the other residences, it is much better kempt but the impression is rather ruined by the general sense of seedy desperation in the area.

They go in dark with their rifle safeties off. Intimidation keeps the flunkies on the ground and first levels quiet before they storm the basement. It’s a thrill of adrenalin that largely disappoints; all five voluntarily surrender.

Then the lead officers come down in their wholly unnecessary Kevlar vests to do the honors of distributing handcuffs and frogmarching the docile arrestees upstairs. A minor victory for the Met, certainly, but a boring one. 

“Do you do a breakdown of the ones like this versus the ones that are, you know, interesting?”

Dakko just snickers and fraternally punches John in the shoulder.

“What, did you think this was going to be like in America?” O’Mahoney teases. He turns pinker than a boiled shrimp after spending more than ten minutes in body armor and sweats prodigiously after twenty. Sometimes John wonders if it isn’t a health hazard to send him into situations where he can’t readily take in replacement fluids without endangering his teammates.

“Funny,” Dakko muses. “It’s usually the baby officers that think this job’s like the movies; you are _way_ out on the curve, gramps.”

“I’m only nine years older than you!”

“Yeah, but you’re greyer than my dad.”

“Fuck off, why don’t you?”

“Yeah, yeah. Hey, newbie, stand guard until the techs get in for this crap.” Tsking, he shoulders the rifle. “Jesus, Pat, we need to get you a fucking towel. We’re going back to the ‘V, all right, Watson? Shout so they don’t leave you down here.”

“What the hell, we’re right here!” Reubens grumbles, and Cothi chimes in his support; completely oblivious, Coombe stares hungrily at the smoke curling up from the cigars abandoned in their ashtrays.

“You know you don’t count, Marty, eh?”

“Go get your towel before you drown, O’Mahoney.”

Flipping Reubens off, Dakko’s and O’Mahoney’s rifle butts knock hollowly against the wall as they galumph upstairs. Coombe sneaks closer to the couch arm and inhales deeply.

Reubens loosens the strap of his helmet and sneers. “Bloody hell, mate, just give it up already.”

“Do you mean he should quit cold turkey or quit trying to quit?”

“One or the other – just so he picks one, you know? All this shillyshallying is driving me mad.”

“Fuck you, Reubens,” Coombe mumbles distractedly.

“Isn’t there a trick to it?” Huw looks to John for the support of a medical opinion. “To quitting, I mean.”

John bites down on his tongue just short of the point of drawing blood until he can reply civilly. “Just find something else and hope it’s healthier.”

“No wonder he ain’t a doctor anymore. No offense,” he adds, unconvincingly.

It’s fine and John says as much, but Huw still reassures him that “he doesn’t mean anything by it. The neighbor’s dog’s been keeping him up late nights.”

Reubens snaps that he doesn’t take kindly to being talked about behind his back and they fall silent until forensics arrive. One of them John vaguely recognizes as having worked a couple scenes he went to with Sherlock. It may be his imagination, but John thinks she might give him a nod of recognition even as she’s herding them out once she is satisfied with their summary of everything that has been touched.

“Come on, Danny! I’ll buy you a bleeding pack at the first shop we pass, for Christ’s sake!” Coombe follows Reubens with reluctance. The smoke swirls in the disturbed air from their passing and then returns to its regular trail.

John hesitates on the third stair. Smoke doesn’t behave like anything in still air.

“We’re completely belowground, aren’t we?” he asks sharply over Huw’s concerned enquiry as to what is wrong.

“What, are you looking to buy?”

“Shut up, Reubens. There are no windows or vents in this wall.”

“So?”

“So, doesn’t it seem odd that the cigar smoke is drifting towards it?”

“Are you getting bent out of shape over a fucking draft?”

But it’s not a draft, obviously. “It’s drifting sideways, not up to where it could escape if the only thing on the other side was dirt. It sounds hollow,” which he demonstrates with a sharp rap with his gun barrel. 

“Did you see the mismatch of the walls upstairs? This one was remodeled and it didn’t get the same paper as the others; it’s just painted that cheap white that every builder in London uses. The cellar door was moved over, away from this wall. Just look at these stairs! They’re at least a decade, probably two, newer than everything else, but the paper on this wall isn’t edged properly, so this wall must have been done even more recently. Why would the Cartel bother to paper this wall but not the one upstairs?”

Everybody is staring, but John is absolutely certain – it’s plainly obvious – and plows on. “Did you notice the smell upstairs? It wasn’t just the piss and vomit of a couple of overdoses and it was very localized to the room right above us. Even if you didn’t smell it, you must have noticed the supply of air fresheners. They were only in _that room_.”

“Yes, alright!” With impatience born of familiarity, she cuts him off. Did he ever know this woman’s name? If they had had more friends on the force—

“Doctor Watson, are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

“That depends; do you also think there’s a smuggler’s hold for human trafficking hidden inside this wall?” Thinking like Sherlock, even at a fraction of the rate of the real thing, apparently also imbues John with Sherlockian sass.

She accepts this conclusion with brisk proficiency. “Where’s the door, then? Probably on the inside, right? Somebody would have noticed them putting people into the foundation outside and if it does go all the way upstairs—”

“It’d be a long drop down, exactly. No, that bit’s just for ventilation.”

Still skeptical but paying attention now, Reubens and Coombe move aside so he can get back on the cellar floor. Because of the way the staircase hugs it down to the lower corner of the side of the basement opposite the entrance, the wall is only accessible underneath the steps. Filing cabinets, the sagging green velour couch, and an ugly armoire block it off entirely, but the dust says only the last is used with any regularity.

The top shelves are filled with liquor bottles and trays of poker chips and cards; the bottom cabinet holds board games and cleaning supplies.

“Well, that was anticlimactic,” Coombe mutters. But he isn’t close enough to smell the stench not quite hidden beneath the strong smell of antiseptics.

“Look at this.” The technician draws closer to see what he’s pointing at. “It’s lighter and rougher than the rest of this wood.”

“They took out the center slat,” she realizes. “To make the opening wider.”

In the avid silence, the tokens rattling inside the boxes as John pulls from the cupboard are very loud. As soon as the cabinet empty, it’s clear that the back panel is not the same wood as the armoire and doesn’t fit correctly. Looking to the CSU woman to make sure she knows what he’s doing, John gently knocks.

Nothing happens for a few moments; and then, there is the smallest of scraping noises from the other side. 

A hammer is suddenly thrust at John and the short time it takes to prise free the nails holding the paneling in place is agonizing. Then the light from Reubens’s torch falls into the exposed, narrow space behind and onto a dirty, frightened face.

* * *

“There were seventeen people inside, women and children. The youngest was sixteen months and the oldest twenty-six. Southeast Asian and Serbian, mostly, but one was African. It was less than a meter wide and no food or water for three days. That’s why they went so easily; they didn’t want us taking too close of a look at the house.

“It’s good, what I—what happened; they were saved because of that. But Sherlock—” John flexes his left hand absently.

“What about Sherlock?” Mary prompts gently, her breath warm against his chest.

John doesn’t want her to think poorly of Sherlock’s character, but he doesn’t want to disguise the man, either. Maybe he never got to good, but he was at least good enough. “It was never about saving people for him. There were very few lines he wouldn’t cross. I mean,” he backtracks, “he wasn’t a bad man, he just— Look, I wasn’t really trying to save their lives. There were just things I noticed and my background allowed me to understand what they meant. That’s all, and that’s all it was for him, too. He was just so good at it and obsessed with being able to read the subtext of every little detail. It didn’t matter what the answer was, just that he _could_ know it.”

She hums gently in acknowledgment and presses a kiss to his ribs but doesn’t pass any judgment aloud; he’s grateful.

* * *

Lestrade hears about the raid and brings it up the next time they tackle 221C, this time putting in crown molding and baseboards.

“You really don’t know how to keep your head down, do you? How did you ever survive in a warzone? No, _forty_ degrees, for God’s sake!”

“The book says forty-five, and you think I should have just let it slide?”

Greg casts a mulish glare at the page that overruled his wisdom. “No, I just think that you’re going about getting away from the pairing of ‘Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson’ the wrong way.”

“I never said that’s what I wanted.”

He puts the band saw to work before Greg can respond but his surprise has only morphed into cautious concern when the board is cut. “Then what do you want, John?”

“Hold that end, will you? I just want to be useful.”

“There are other ways to be useful.”

“You’re one to talk. Tell me again, how many times did you fail to work fewer hours when your wife asked?”

Unperturbed by the snide remark, Greg shrugs. “And look where it got me. Aren’t you serious about Mary? It’s the longest relationship I’ve ever seen you have, and you seem to really like her.”

“Of course I like her. And one of the reasons I like her—” he drills a screw into place, “—is that she understands what the job demands.”

Greg lets him finish screwing the section of crown molding into place in peace before asking, “Has she stayed over?”

“You and Mrs. Hudson should speculate about my love life together. Yes, she has, and I’ve stayed at hers. I have every intention of seeing this through. Are you satisfied with my mental health? Can we get back to work?”

Greg looks around contemplatively; so far, only two and a half of the four walls in the first room have crown molding. “How about a beer instead?”

* * *

_Lestrade says you’re serious. Would you like to see the background check?_

“ _Bastards_.”

“What did you say, Doctor Watson?”

“Nothing, Mrs. Hudson!”

_Stop telling on me to Mycroft. Stay away from her Mycroft I know you’re reading this._

Greg knows better than to ask for forgiveness. John wouldn’t ask for it, anyway.

* * *

The sight of Mycroft sitting in his living room – in John’s chair; he has some sense of tact and self-preservation – is more wearying than incensing, but John still takes cruel enjoyment in seeing that he has put on weight. Clearly, Mycroft knows what he’s thinking because his mouth twists in displeasure and he stands to emphasize his height advantage in retaliation.

“John.”

“Mycroft.” He imparts as much disdain as he can on the syllables.

“Why don’t you sit down?”

John snorts. “In my own sitting room, of course. I think I will, thanks.”

As soon as he is seated – in Sherlock’s chair – Mycroft looms over him to hand over a very slim manila file out of a briefcase John suspects he owns solely for this meeting; John does not take it.

“I told you, I don’t want you poking into Mary’s life. Or mine, for that matter.”

“I assure you, this has nothing to do with Ms. Morstan.”

John straightens eagerly. “Did you find Moriarty?”

Annoyed, Mycroft sucks on the inside of one cheek. “Unfortunately, no. Will you be so kind, Doctor Watson? My apologies; you prefer Constable Watson now.”

Pursing his lips in irritation, John obediently takes the folder and flips open the cover. “This is the girl,” he says slowly. “The girl from the house in Westminster.”

“Yes.”

A quick glance over what proves to be her medical evaluation shows the predictable malnutrition and skin irritation from her treatment at the hands of the Cartel. Her attending prescribed a soothing cream and a strict diet to bring her back up to weight. 

“I’m not a pediatrician. I don’t know why you’re showing me this.” When he tries to hand the records back, Mycroft retreats to his chair without accepting it.

“I’m not looking for another medical opinion; she has enough of those.” No doubt out of spite, he steeples his fingers just below his jowly chin. “Her mother, Mila, was one of the others rescued. She has been a slave for three years and is only sixteen. Rather understandably, given the choice, she does not want to keep the child.”

“Why did the Cartel even allow her to carry to term?”

“Apparently, she caught the eye of one of the more senior officers with a reputation for enjoying and despoiling youthfulness and was under his protection. When he went to prison, she and the child went back into the pool to be resold.”

“Well, that is awful but I still don’t see—”

“Really, John, I think you’re being deliberately obtuse,” Mycroft chides, radiating disappointment. “I can hardly send her back to Serbia in good conscience, not with the imminent— Well, suffice it to say it’s not the best option for her. I assumed that you would have her best interests at heart.” He inclines his head for the express purpose of looking up reproachfully at John.

Not even Mycroft would—but he _is_.

“Oh, no. O-ho, no you don’t! You can’t possibly—I work full time! _You_ pay half my rent! You can’t leave her with me!”

“I’ve already taken care of—”

“I bet you have!”

“I’ve made you a temporary guardian,” Mycroft continues severely across the interruption. “Not an adoptive parent until you decide to keep her. Don’t scowl so, John; childcare and a small increase in your monthly stipend are hardly enough to ‘put a dent in the wealth of a nation.’”

John grinds his teeth. Can a Holmes ever be made to understand? “That’s not the point.”

“Well, for heaven’s sake, do tell me the point so that I can put your mind at rest.”

“Why now?”

Mycroft doesn’t blink and it must be on purpose; this is the right line of questioning.

“I was on a call three months ago that put a ten month old baby into care. Why not that one? Did you think I would prefer a girl? You forget I know you, Mycroft. You don’t do anything out of the goodness of your heart.”

“I merely thought—”

“That I’m getting on in years and want to start a family before it’s too late?” John guesses shrewdly. “Maybe that’s true, but I know you’re not that guilty over Sherlock’s death. I’m not that dense and I _know_ you. Somehow, this all comes back to you. And the only thing I care about that has anything to do with you is Moriarty. So, _stop lying_ to me and tell me what’s really going on.”

Mycroft runs his hand across the handle of his umbrella as he evaluates John for a long and tense moment. He is the first to look away.

“I told you before that we keep tabs on people like Moriarty,” he begins crisply, as though he always intended to admit this. “They are, fortunately, a rare breed but undeniably resilient. Usually, though, a gunshot to the head is sufficient.” He meets John’s eyes, expression bland. “Moriarty is dead.”

Mycroft isn’t lying. Something dangerous uncoils in John’s gut.

“Where?” He cannot believe it until he sees the body on a slab.

“He killed himself on the rooftop of St. Barts the same day—” Mycroft breaks off voluntarily when John rises, shaking in anger.

“Do you expect me to believe that they had some kind of _suicide pact_?” he spits.

“I’m sure that’s how Moriarty thought of it. Perhaps a few years earlier I could have believed that of my brother, but by then he had too much to live for.” Mycroft looks up meaningfully. “I expect that is how Moriarty manipulated him into jumping.”

Exhaling sharply, John forces himself to focus. “Why now? What’s changed?”

“We concealed Moriarty’s death in the hopes that all his top clients and favorite contractors could be brought down in one fell swoop rather than being dissimilated and absorbed into the new generation of organized crime syndicates. What neither Moriarty nor I anticipated was a newcomer waging a one-man war against the old regime. He has proved…formidable. It appears he started in drug and gun running and has now persuaded or beaten Moriarty’s more regular clients into submission.”

“Who is he?”

Mycroft crosses his legs and is forced to unbutton his straining suit jacket. “The name we have is an obvious alias – Jack Harrison doesn’t exist. Based on what he’s done, I hazard a likely accurate guess that he was some sort of enforcer, probably trained in South Africa. The rumor is that he sends six hundred-pound Gurkha cigars to the people he intends to kill – a friendly reminder to enjoy their last hours.”

The brand name doesn’t mean anything to John, but the price tag says it all. “A little eager to be noticed, isn’t he?”

“He’s gotten my attention.”

“No.” His vehemence is enough to mildly astonish Mycroft. “Innocent people die when you lot try to one-up each other.”

Eyes narrowing, Mycroft challenges, “Would you prefer I ignored him? Already he has international stakes in drug trafficking, human trafficking, contract killings – and still upwardly mobile. He’s ambitious. What do you think the cost, the _human_ cost of letting him be could come to?”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“No,” Mycroft agrees softly, pityingly. “I know what you meant. You are not equal to this battle just because you’ve seen from the sidelines one waged and lost.”

That was Mycroft’s failure at least as much as his, but John will not shy away from taking blame by pointing that out. “I know I’m not—”

“But will still act. You forget that I also know _you_ , Doctor Watson. I am only trying to keep you safe.”

“By giving me a child.” Dutifully, John winces without any feeling. “And that’s an idea I hope never to consider in connection with you again.”

As usual, humor is not something for which Mycroft makes time. “By giving you a reason to live,” he corrects, and heaves to his feet with creaking seat springs. “Think it over.”

He doesn’t ask for the girl’s file back and John doesn’t offer it.

“I’ll have to talk to Mary.”

“If you like,” he accedes, with the air of someone bemused at the harmless oddities a foreign culture. “You have my number.”

“I’ll just tell Lestrade instead.”

Unrepentant, Mycroft twirls his umbrella in self-satisfaction on his way out.

* * *

John knows that it was always more than keeping him from hunting down Harrison. He cannot abandon Baker Street, but there are only two bedrooms. The prospect of going through, possibly getting rid of Sherlock’s things is more daunting than that of trying to explain all this to Mary.

He could just ask Mycroft to store it, but that would be one more admission of defeat than John is willing to make at this point.

Trying to come up with a name, John blanks. Greg suggests Sophie, Mary likes Melanie, but Mrs. Hudson wins out with Helena. She cries when John gave her the empty title of godmother and promises to spoil Ellie rotten, which John had expected anyway.

The supposedly competent authorities leave Helena with John after an extremely cursory inspection, which he doesn’t know should be attributed to a broken system or to Mycroft’s meddling. With five weeks of care behind her, she looks nothing like the maltreated whelp he helped pull out of the plaster, and doesn’t seem to recognize him, either. She also speaks a few words in English; in the records Mycroft sent, her therapist says Helena’s language and motor skills are only slightly underdeveloped for her age group. Her past is only obvious in her apparent phobia for uncleanliness and, after some initial shyness, constant demands to be held.

He never wanted kids, except in the vague way that social expectations induce. 

“It’s just temporary,” he tells Mary.

“John, you gave her your name.” She touches his cheek and smiles wryly. “You’re too good a man to let that be the end of it.”

By the end of the first fortnight, Ellie learns the word and calls him Daddy without compunction, and he doesn’t know who taught her that.

* * *

Mary carries the violin for him because John’s arms are full of Ellie. She offers to keep Ellie occupied to let John have a moment of privacy, but John has always believed that Sherlock needs to acclimate to being around unfamiliar people. Besides which, he learned to play the theme song to Ellie’s favorite show for this occasion.

Mary brought a second bouquet of flowers from her garden for Sherlock as well as the one for her niece; John has given up on trying to talk her out the gesture. He lets Ellie tear it apart and scatter the flowers on the grass around the headstone. She doesn’t quite understand why they occasionally come this this park, but she knows the word ‘Sher-law’ is integral to the experience. 

John takes Mary up on the offer of privacy as they’re leaving. He means to tell Sherlock that he hasn’t given up on proving his innocence and that he misses him still. 

Somewhere back by the church, Ellie squeals with delight and Mary laughs; John leaves, ashamed, without having said anything.


	3. Catalysis

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warnings for a blink-and-you'll-miss-it depiction of torture and implications of more extensive torture.

They have a small celebration when he and Greg finally finish 221C. Mrs. Hudson has picked out somewhat less incongruous wallpaper patterns than are upstairs, but the final product seems less comfortably homey by at least half. Ellie dances around the empty rooms while singing unintelligibly in the manner of a lavish musical, gesturing splendidly to the finer points of the refurbished flat and only falling over a few times.

“She’s just precious,” Mrs. Hudson coos.

“She’s on a sugar high,” counters Greg, who is on his fifth biscuit.

“It’ll be naptime soon.” John secretly likes carrying her up to her room when she falls asleep where she stands. It’s the only time he can just hold her, when she’s not dashing about madly or demanding more than he can give at the moment.

“I expect it will let soon.”

Mrs. Hudson beams at Mary and launches into a speech very complimentary to John and Greg. Neither feels the need to interrupt to share credit with Mycroft or his checkbook.

* * *

It is not strange that he sleeps in Sherlock’s bed, surrounded by Sherlock’s things that he couldn’t bring himself to give away or put away and memorizing the periodic table from Sherlock’s framed copy on the wall as he drifts off.

The sheets are new, he does not wear Sherlock’s dressing gown, and the other pillow smells like Mary’s shampoo.

It is absolutely normal.

* * *

Ellie usually stays with Mrs. Hudson when John’s at work. He didn’t want to impose, but she waved it all off and told him that looking after her goddaughter is a better way to spend the day than watching reruns of daytime talk shows.

Their favorite activity is coloring. Soon the refrigerators in both A and B are covered in various colorful scribbles that are supposed to be portraits, or still life studies in the furniture, or the landscape out the front windows. Working together, John and Mrs. Hudson teach Ellie how to sign her name at the bottom of each one. 

“Daddy,” Ellie says, her eyes – hazel, but the left one has a brown corona around the pupil, making her charmingly lopsided – wide and beseeching, because there is apparently not a single person in John’s life who does not instantly know how to work him over. “Daddy, colors.”

It’s going to be a bad one.

“It’s bedtime now, Ellie. You can color tomorrow.”

“Colors, Daddy! No, colors!”

“You’re only grumpy because you’re sleepy,” John tells her, but mostly tells himself because Ellie is whining and tugging at her own pajama top. If it escalates any further, she’ll wail and hang on his pants leg, which is always not good.

“No! Not sleepy!”

“You’re going to wake up Mrs. Hudson with your yelling. She won’t want to sing the alphabet with you if you wake her up.”

He feels guilty about that kind of emotional manipulation, but the other option is shouting. That is not the man John wants to be, the one he always has sworn he never would be. So far, the underhanded method is mostly working, but he doesn’t feel good about it and dreads what will happen when it no longer does.

The longer this arrangement goes on, the more he thinks he should put a stop to it and the less viable that option seems. There are so many reasons that John shouldn’t have Helena – he’s technically single but still lets Ellie play with Mary like she’s a permanent fixture when he’s moderately certain she doesn’t even like children all that much; John himself has never been in close proximity to small children excepting his brief rotation in pediatrics, which bored him; he works fulltime in a fairly high-risk profession and leaves Ellie with his elderly landlady because he’s too proud to accept the financial assistance of his dead flatmate’s brother; he has a very short fuse and has been diagnosed with PTSD that he doesn’t treat pharmaceutically or therapeutically; he comes from a family of alcoholics and the older he gets, the more certain he is that he will one day wake up with absolutely no knowledge of the previous night except that it was fueled by the contents of now empty liquor bottles.

The only reason he does not send her back is that Ellie calls him Daddy; she would be hurt if he abandoned her.

When she throws tantrums, he picks her up and muffles her screams against his neck and shoulder. For now, she’s small enough that John can still her little limbs in their flailing and still have a hand free to stroke her back. He hums so that she can feel his voice even while she makes too much noise to hear it, and wonders when it will occur to her to bite him in her struggles to get free.

It doesn’t happen that night; Ellie is dozing after less than fifteen minutes, and he carries her up to her bed – which has drab white sheets and a simple brown comforter because it used to be John’s bed, – thankful that she had brushed her teeth before the meltdown.

His shirts usually end up wet around the collar as a consequence of this technique, but John thinks that is an affordable sacrifice.

Ellie forgets about these moments as soon as they’re over, adores him just as much as soon as the tears are wiped away. John cannot count them but each successive time, the doubts and uncertainties are heavier in his mind, and he’s only had her for three and a half months.

That night, he lies in bed and wonders how Sherlock could remember every single insult and insinuation and not let it affect his attitude for the work that brought him into constant contact with his detractors.

* * *

“Why didn’t you tell us you’re married?”

“Who’s married?”

“Cap is.”

“He doesn’t wear a ring.”

“I’m not married.”

Davidson shrugs and turns away, thinking it’s a secret how pleased he is to have drawn everyone’s attention. “There’s a fine bird with a kid out front asking for you and Orman’s seen her, so if you’re looking to avoid paying child support, it’s too late.”

John does not tell them that he essentially collects child support from one of his enemies for a child to whom neither of them contributed any DNA; he doesn’t want to try explaining or coming up with a plausible story.

“You’re not like that, are you, John?” Huw always comes to his defense, and John doesn’t know what he did to deserve it.

“Shacking up, then? How modern of you.” Dakko gets a sweat-soaked shirt thrown in his face for that.

“Why didn’t you tell us you have kids?”

“At least put a towel on, O’Mahoney, Jesus. Just the one, and she’s adopted. Recently.” This conversation is not one John relishes, though he knows it was going to have to come up at some point. Hoping to get it over with soon, he sits down and ducks his head to tie his shoelaces. 

Annoyed to not be the primary source of information anymore, Davidson sidles closer. “Didn’t think she looked like either of you. They don’t let single men adopt. Are you common-law married?”

“No.”

“She a relative, then?”

“No.” He does not want to tell them that most of them have already seen her, and Coombe carried her up into her first fresh air in six days before handing her off to paramedics. 

“Fucking hell, Davidson, where’s your rubber hose? He don’t want to talk about her with you. I want to hear more about this lady.” Dakko leers for effect. “Is she pretty?”

To save face, Davidson feigns disinterest. “I don’t know – not my taste, you know what I’m saying?”

O’Mahoney bumps his naked hip against John’s shoulder, leaving a small damp spot on his shirt. “You going to let him talk about your woman like that, Watson?”

“I’d have to pay attention to him first.” John feels a small surge of satisfaction at the scowl this evokes from Davidson. He’s a nosy sneak with little loyalty outside of a firefight that takes fiendish delight in stirring up conflict. He was the one to unsubtly insinuate that John’s an idiot for still believe in Sherlock’s innocence; at the least the others made a pretense of sympathy.

“But she’s your girlfriend?” presses Huw, blatant curiosity written across his face despite his best efforts. John really doesn’t know how this puppyish boy ended up in the blue berets, let alone as one of John’s fondest friends.

“She is. Her name is Mary.” He makes a rash decision and adds, “My daughter is Helena – Ellie.”

“Oh. That’s a nice name.”

It is; John resolves to invite Huw over to Baker Street sometime. He has an inkling that Huw will make space on his refrigerator for one of Ellie’s masterpieces.

“I’m running late. See you all tomorrow, yeah?” John claps Huw on the back on his way out.

O’Mahoney catcalls and Dakko yells after him, “I’m not done with you, Watson! Bring us pictures!”

It hits John as he’s walking down the hall that he doesn’t have any pictures of Mary or Ellie. He doesn’t know how to ask her. On the other hand, he doesn’t need guts or permission to take photos of his daughter when she does something adorable.

Mary smiles and greets him as Daddy so Ellie will know who she’s talking to and runs across the room to him. Catching her as she careens into his legs feels natural by now, but he doesn’t particularly like Mary calling him by anything other than his name. 

“You didn’t have to do this,” he apologizes again.

“It’s really no trouble, John.” But on the walk over, she asks, “Does Dr. Kelley think she still needs to come back? I would never guess she was anything but normal if I didn’t know.”

John breathes out through his nose and brushes his thumb across the back of Ellie’s hand. “She’s friends with Dr. Kelley. Mrs. Hudson and Lestrade and I can usually manage between the three of us.”

“Oh, I don’t mind!” She taps the tips of her fingers against Ellie’s ringlets, “We had fun together, didn’t we, Ellie?”

Ellie giggles and presses her finger to her lips instead of answering, and Mary laughs. John suspects she bribes Ellie with candy when he’s not watching.

Even though he tells her she doesn’t have to, Mary says she’ll wait around window-shopping and meet them after the appointment and leaves them with kisses and the taste of caramels. 

These weekly evaluations of Ellie’s emotional and psychological stability are indistinguishable from play dates as far as John can tell, but he much prefers them to his experiences with therapy. And every week, while Ellie’s preoccupied with the toys she doesn’t have at home, Dr. Kelley reassures John that everything – her behavior and development, his insecurities and muddled feelings – is perfectly normal.

“Is this a situation you encounter a lot?” John jokes weakly over his equally weak tea.

“I see first time adoptive parents and single fathers all the time.”

And so, Mycroft wins again, but John doesn’t mind. The most important thing is Ellie grows up surrounded by people who don’t make her feel like she’s different from everybody else.

The tea isn’t any good, so John and Dr. Kelley abandon their paper cups and get on the floor with Ellie, who demands someone read her a book and then loses interest as soon as she’s flipped through all the pages quicker than they can be read.

* * *

Without renovations to give them a reason to get together, John decides to let Greg know what he’s been doing in his free time over the past two years. No point in keeping it secret, now that he knows it’s all for naught. It’s all handwritten on paper, little annotations in the margins of news articles he has printed out arranged in painstakingly reassembled timelines, because he found a perverse reassurance in the knowledge that someone would have to break into the flat and physically steal his work if they wanted to know what he’s doing. He could write a very good book and call it something grandiose, befitting of the last acts of two extraordinary men.

When John lays it out for him, Greg sighs, like he knew this was coming but he wishes he could have pretended a while longer that everything was on its way back to a semblance of normal. “Every investigation cleared him, you know that.”

“I know, I saw it.” A small story buried in the middle of the newspaper to say Sherlock had been found innocent of the charges of fraud, with so little space allotted to it that there wasn’t even room for a thumbnail of the hat picture. “They didn’t indict Moriarty.”

“That wasn’t my decision.”

“I know that was Mycroft, Greg. I don’t blame you.”

Helplessly, Greg gestures at the controlled chaos of John’s research laid out on the table. “Then what do you want me to do with this? I think we can agree that Moriarty was always above my pay grade.”

It hits John: Mycroft didn’t tell him. “Moriarty’s already dead.”

“Get out of it. He can’t be; Mycroft would have said.” Granting John’s disbelieving scoff, Greg crosses his arms. “When?”

“The same day as Sherlock.”

“That’s not possible,” Greg contradicts instantly. “I’ve seen all the reports, which I wasn’t supposed to but I spent too much time around you two. The roof was clean except for Sherlock’s mobile, and the last things on it were a text to an unknown number and the call to yours. There’s no evidence that Moriarty was on that roof at any time.”

“You don’t think he just jumped without provocation, Greg, come on!”

“I know that, but there’s no body, John!” Looking exhausted, Lestrade drops into a chair. “Who told you Moriarty was dead? Do you trust Mycroft _now_ , of all times, of all people?”

“Of course not.” But he didn’t ask for any sort of proof; it made too much sense at the time, and Ellie’s file had been in his hands, demanding his attention, too.

Rubbing a tired hand across his eyes, Greg pulls on the mantle of Detective Inspector and sits up. “Alright, what exactly did Mycroft tell you?”

“Moriarty shot himself in the head on top of Barts. Mycroft covered it up so he could take down Moriarty’s whole network in one fell swoop, but there’s a complication – a new player, started snapping up Moriarty’s clients as soon as he was dead.” John frowns. “How did he know Moriarty was dead?”

“Nobody got up on the roof for nearly an hour afterwards, so I suppose it’s possible Mycroft could have had the scene scrubbed by the time they did the search,” Greg grudgingly allows. “But that wouldn’t explain the fact that none of Moriarty’s associates notice he’s gone off the grid for over two years. Why would they still be loyal to him after all that time?”

“You know what he was like,” John argues. “A consultant criminal – he contracted out to local talent. There wouldn’t be a group of people who saw him or even heard from him except for when he needed them or they were getting out of line. Moriarty played the schoolyard king because he thought everyone else was beneath him, not because he wanted to be a mob boss that everybody knew but didn’t dare to touch. Just the mention of his name was enough; nobody ever saw him or spoke directly to him.”

“Except for you and Sherlock.”

He knows what Greg’s getting at. “There is no way that was a decoy. Moriarty wouldn’t send a proxy to play chess in his name. Especially not in front of the two most observant men in Britain - it’d be just too risky.”

Greg doesn’t look entirely convinced, but the prospect of Moriarty working in that many layers of duplicity is one only unhappily contemplated. “Then what about this other guy – if Mycroft hid it, how did he know Moriarty was dead and his position was up for grabs?”

“Mycroft said he was a trained mercenary, started in drugs and arms dealing. Maybe he was in the middle of a contract and figured it out when he lost contact.”

“Wouldn’t Moriarty have thought of that?”

“He wouldn’t care once he was dead.”

“If he is dead,” Greg cautions darkly. “I hate him as—nearly as much as you do, John, but why would he give it all up? He had the Holmes brothers on their toes, he wasn’t just playing king of the world anymore; he _was_ king.”

“You’re trying to give him a regular motive, but he wasn’t a normal person. He wasn’t _sane_. He was—” John taps his fist against his thigh in agitation. “He was Sherlock, just twisted and warped out of neutrality. He played games to see how far he could go, how many people he could trick and manipulate and how many white knights he could best. He did it because he was _bored_. When Sherlock was bored, he went out of his mind.”

“I know—”

“No, you don’t. He would chain-smoke and wear boxfuls of nicotine patches at the same time. He would shoot holes in the wall or lie down and not sleep or eat for days on end just to see who would care. Mycroft would stop by just to provoke Sherlock into pretending he was the Holmes version of well adjusted, so he wouldn’t spiral further into self-destruction.

“Sherlock always talked about Moriarty like he was a kindred spirit, like they were the same, and Moriarty was obsessed with him, calling him out by name and challenging him to duels. And then he _beat_ Sherlock.” 

John feels slightly numb, so he says it again: “He beat Sherlock.” It still feels flat, simply there, an acknowledgment of reality. “You said it yourself – Moriarty was at the top of the heap, king of all us ants with his magnifying glass on a sunny day. Sherlock was always at his worst when all the cases were solved, and killing ants wasn’t Moriarty’s idea of good entertainment.”

Greg stares, disturbed and disbelieving. “Are you saying you think Sherlock and by extension Moriarty would have committed suicide to stop being bored?”

Would he have done? Was that why? John came running when he heard gunshots, broke into military bases when Sherlock said. Was making him watch Sherlock die the last experiment? “The Effectiveness of Various Emotional Devastations and Their Accumulations on the Average British Male” would get more hits than the article on tobacco ash, partly because the Internet had some dark niches and mostly because people would know that John was the whole sample. 

Very slowly, John shakes his head. “Sherlock always had Mycroft to spar with, even if he had to go very far to get his attention. But Moriarty thought he had no equals, no one he thought could best him on their very best day. He somehow got Sherlock to take that final step that he never would have on his own, and that was the fatal blow against Mycroft, too.” John laughs hollowly. “The only two interesting people left in the world and Moriarty managed to put them both on a level with the idiots.”

It’s silent except for faint sounds from the street. Soon, Ellie will wake up from her nap and John and Greg will play the games she dictates, crawling on the floor until their knees are stiff and painful and John orders in because he put off starting dinner too late. He might order extra and invite Mary and Mrs. Hudson and have all the most important people in his life around the same table. 

In his life right now. John doesn’t go and talk to Sherlock’s grave as often as he used to. It’s a bit of an expensive taxi ride and he doesn’t want Ellie to spend half her childhood in a graveyard. But he doesn’t get rid of Sherlock’s things or the box of his attempts to find the truth. He dreams of conversations that never happened or turn out differently than they did the first time through. Even though these dreams wake him up and he can’t get back to sleep for a long time after, he never takes anything. 

Holding onto both lives is exhausting, but he can’t imagine giving up either.

“If Moriarty’s dead—and I’m not saying he is because I have not personally shot the bastard dead.” Greg leans forward and puts his elbows on his knees. “But if he is, then what are you doing? There’s no one to bring to justice or take revenge on, is there?”

“There’s Harrison. He’s setting himself up to be Moriarty’s successor, and Mycroft hasn’t gotten him yet, so it’s at least possible that he’ll be as bad, if not worse.”

“And you and me will be the ones to do it, bring him down?” Greg snorts incredulously. “And I’ve been telling people you haven’t gone mad.”

“If we just—”

“For God’s sake, John!” Lestrade gets to his feet, and he’s a lot taller than John is. He remembers Ellie sleeping upstairs, though, and lowers his voice to a hiss. “You’re a smart guy and a fucking brave one, God knows, but this is way out of anyone’s league! You’ll get yourself killed and leave your daughter alone and I know that’s not what you want. If you need to be a detective on the side, fine, you are actually good at it; I’ll get you a look at some cases. Just keep your bloody head down out this mess!”

John meets Greg’s gaze steadily, feeling the rush of certain success. “I’m not the friendlier knockoff of Sherlock Holmes, Greg, and I’m not stupid. I always played second fiddle, and I didn’t mind. But I can’t just step back and let Mycroft handle Harrison the same way he did Moriarty. Did you know he was the one who told him all the details that got printed in that Kitty Riley exposé?”

“I did, actually, and I about punched him in his simpering face for it.” Lips pursed, Greg takes in John’s unwavering resolve; John observes the exact moment he folds. “Alright then, what _do_ you want to do?”

“I just want to know what’s going on, hopefully get close enough to tell Mycroft when he’s taking too many needless risks with too many innocent lives. That’s _all_ , Greg. You know that there needs to be someone to do it.” 

“Why are you telling me all this? You don’t need me, only Mycroft.” Realization dawns on his face, and Greg scowls. “You want me to get him to agree to it. Fucking hell, John, we’re not _dating_! And even if we were—!”

“Jesus, Greg, I have to eat sometime in the future. He’ll already know I’ve asked you to say something, so just go through with it. That’ll be enough.”

John holds his gaze for a long minute, hoping Greg still trusts him enough to follow his lead.

Finally, Greg says, “I can’t figure out if prolonged exposure to Sherlock made you reckless, or if you’re just better at hiding what a crazy bastard you’ve always been.”

Triumphant, John chuckles. “Ta, mate.”

He ends up not calling Mary, since she would have to come all the way across London just for dinner, but Greg never says no to a hot meal and Mrs. Hudson comes up after a bit of cajoling and John takes a picture of Ellie with chopstick fangs, so it’s just as good.

* * *

Specialist firearms training would take him to Kent for eight weeks, so John tells Mullur he’s putting it on hold until he has a better grasp on fatherhood. He shows Mullur the pictures of Ellie on his phone – besides the chopsticks, he has her first time with watercolors, which was a colossal mess but made her grin like a loon; ‘reading’ a book to her stuffed animals and the skull, which is thankfully mostly hidden by the turtle; and her draped in all of Mrs. Hudson’s jewelry, which Ellie calls her treasures and asks to see almost every day – and Mullur tells him about his daughter, Parvati, who enjoys some small celebrity at her school for sharing a name with a Harry Potter character. 

“It’s good to see you happy, Doctor Watson.”

He is happy, and he has every right to be. “Thank you, sir.”

Mullur tells him to come by if he ever changes his mind, but clearly has no intention of urging John to reconsider.

* * *

It is a risk to go at Mycroft through Lestrade, but John is confident it will pay off. For whatever reason – and all his needling at Greg aside, John thinks laziness is most likely, – Mycroft still goes to Lestrade whenever he needs to work with the Met. Even before, though, Mycroft invested more time in liaising with Greg than he did with John, probably because Greg had been more cautious about alienating someone who could ruin his career than the then-unemployed John, and Mycroft continues that tradition in the irritating Holmesian manner of knowing more than anybody should and making it known whenever he feels like it. In any case, using Greg as the intermediary keeps John out of the position of coming to Mycroft like a serf going to his lord to plead for enough to eat over the winter.

Whether through bugging or simple observation and intuition, John knew that Mycroft would know what he was after before he or Greg ever brought it up. He told Greg as much just in case he hadn’t figured that already, so Mycroft would know that John knew that Mycroft would already know. 

Challenging a Holmes’s wits is exhausting; it was easier with Sherlock as the one keeping everything straight and explaining it to John later. 

Less than a week after their conversation, Greg texts him, _Just seen Mycroft. Think he was trying to make my head explode with the force_ , which makes John smile briefly before he sets the scene.

When Mycroft arrives in pinstripe suit indistinguishable from all his others except that John knows it has been tailored recently because it fits Mycroft’s increased figure impeccably, John is making a proper dinner in his combat boots while Ellie plays dress-up in one of his jumpers that hangs to her ankles that she, with subtle encouragement, has belted like a gown with one of Sherlock’s backup scarfs. 

Mycroft eyes her and hangs his omnipresent umbrella on the coatrack with a sniff. “Really, John, I thought you were more sensible. What Sherlockian theatrics.”

“The things you pick up,” John shrugs, unsurprised that his machinations were so quickly spotted. “Biscuit?”

Mycroft looks down his patrician nose with narrowed eyes. “It seems a wonder you and Sherlock didn’t get into more trouble than you did. I can assure you that I have at my disposal operatives who could—”

“I know you don’t need gunmen, Mycroft.”

After a moment, Mycroft says with deliberate slowness, “I don’t need an audience, either.”

And that stings, but John reminds himself that Sherlock might have said something similar to someone else before they ever met. He keeps his expression neutral and his tone even. “Never said you did.”

They watch each other for a while. Having known that this was a distinct possibility, John had turned off the burner as soon as Mycroft spoke, even though he hadn’t added the ham or the eggs yet.

“There’s no one you can kill that will bring him back, John.” Mycroft speaks softly, so Ellie won’t hear and learn to associate Daddy with evil things.

“I just want to be there when you’re making the decisions,” John clarifies steadily. “I want to be there when someone else kills him.”

“And try to counteract my orders, I’m sure.” At least he isn’t trying to pretend that he isn’t the one who calls the shots – Caesar giving the go-ahead for gladiators to live or die at another’s hands.

John freely concurs, “If I think they’re wrong, I will. I’m sure you don’t _need_ another yes-man.”

He doesn’t deny that, only sucks the inside of his cheek momentarily. “You could,” he allows finally, “be useful.”

“I’ll need everything on Harrison.” Pressing his luck, John turns back to his frittata in dismissal.

There is a short, tense silence. “Very well.” Mycroft collects his umbrella but loiters at the door; John braces himself.

“I’m surprised,” he admits with unctuous slyness, fussing with his cuffs. “You have such a full life by most standards, and still you crave something else.”

Instead of answering, John grips the handle of the spatula and reminds himself of all the reasons he should not assault Mycroft. Truth be told, it’s a very short list.

Having gotten the last word in, Mycroft leaves smug. 

While the pan reheats, John watches Ellie serve her animals and the skull imaginary tea and crumpets, a queen holding court. She hadn’t paid Mycroft the least bit of attention, if she had even noticed that he had been there. He wonders if he can slowly extricate her life from Mycroft’s clutches and keep her safe from that world, the battleground.

Then he decides that it doesn’t matter if he can because he _will_ do it, end of. 

There’s a clatter of hard-soled boots on the stairs and Mary comes in. Her hair is freshly dyed, and John rather misses her roots.

“Miss Mary!” Ellie jumps up, tea party forgotten, and runs over with greedy expectation.

“Hello, Miss Ellie! I like your dress.”

Ellie pulls out the hem of John’s oversized jumper with sudden shyness before bolting back into the sitting room. Their relationship relies very heavily on illicit sweets, and neither of them waste much time on it when their primary form of communication hasn’t changed hands.

“There was a man as I came in,” Mary says as she kisses his cheek. “Was he here to look at downstairs, do you know?”

He’s told her about Sherlock’s brother but never by name and anyway, it’s not important. “Bloke from my old job.”

“Oh?”

John makes a vague, distracted noise. “Did you want cheese on this?”

She must know he’s changing the subject and fleetingly looks irritated, but Mary never presses. He thinks he might like that sometimes.

* * *

There are nights when Mary seems irrationally angry at how attentive he is even as she demands more. She pushes his head down and when he bows, her thighs clamp down to hold him in place while she pulls his hair and leaves bruises across his back with her heels. When he’s inside her, she muffles her own breathy moans and viciously digs her nails into his arms, his shoulders, his buttocks, for no reason but to drive him ever faster and harder. Not because it feels good; just to make him do it.

“Do you like that?” he asks finally, the first time his skin breaks and spots with blood. “Domination?” It’s embarrassing but for the sake of health and safety, this conversation has to happen. 

Mary looks vaguely surprised and chagrinned that he should think that. She isn’t nearly as bold as Irene Adler had been, but possibly nobody is or ever was before. And anyway, it’s not like boldness in the everyday is a prerequisite to a bit of power play in the bedroom.

“Do _you_ like it?”

It’s bewildering and frustrating, being punished for trying to make it good for her and apparently succeeding; it makes coming seem like a victory. The ache and the tautness of his flesh the next day are a bit nice, too – the souvenirs of something dangerous he dared and survived. 

“Well, I don’t mind it, anyway.”

She looks disappointed, even sighs. Then she spreads petroleum jelly over the scratch marks he can’t reach and doesn’t apologize for them.

* * *

He hasn’t heard from Mycroft in more than a month, but John’s reasonably confident that he hasn’t been cut out of the loop. For one, Mycroft made good on his agreement to brief John on Harrison. An innocuous package had arrived by courier and, with Greg’s help, John went through and matched up all the events with which Harrison had been connected against news reports; if nothing else, it was a hard lesson in the idea of a free press. 

For another, the file that John is allowed to have at Baker Street is not complete, but he is allowed to view some of the rest of it at an unassuming office building where he has to surrender his electronic devices and suffer the constant presence of one of Mycroft’s agents. Notes are right out, but most of what he isn’t permitted to keep at home are just the few details that spies and informants have found out and analysts’ speculations about the man himself. 

The name Harrison has become infamous but he is nearly as good as Moriarty at protecting his identity. There is only a vague description of the man who has set himself up as an emperor among criminal kings – tall, dark hair, deep voice, affected English accent, ruthless killer when it suits. The only people known to have seen him in person – and recognized who he was – are dead of the meeting. From his apparent bilocation, it is plain Harrison has at least one trusted lieutenant, but as nobody has even heard the lieutenant’s name, there is only conjecture as to who he might be.

It’s a warm Saturday morning and, unusually, John hasn’t thought about Harrison in the last forty-eight hours. Work was a nightmare and when he came home, Ellie was by turns manic and cranky; it took over an hour to get her into bed. His one comfort was that he would be spending the next day alone with Mary for the first time in over a month.

He’s a bit late starting out, so he sends Mary a text to let her know. As he is getting on the Tube, a reply comes in.

_Get off at the next station. –M_

As though it might have been anyone else.

Sighing, John begs a rain check from Mary and texts Greg to let him know that he might be kept later than expected.

 _It’s fine. Good luck_ is the reply. Mycroft must have told him already.

The waiting sedan takes John to a new inconspicuous building, where the secretary takes him through an inner office to a private elevator that requires a retinal scan to operate. Several stories belowground, it is like Churchill’s Cabinet War Rooms mated with movie technology. For what is presumably a shadow operation, there are quite a few people working away at various computer terminals.

“Ah, Doctor Watson.” If John had ever seen Mycroft without his umbrella before, he couldn’t remember it. “If you will.”

More curious than annoyed by now, John leads the way through the indicated door. There is a hallway with rows of doors, and Mycroft waves a proximity card to get into the third on the left. Inside there is a woman wearing a headset sitting at the video and audio controls for the interview room visible on the other side of one-way glass.

“Corbin Ilseng,” Mycroft says, nodding toward the man in there. “A middling officer in the Cartel – you might call him an acquisitions agent. He’s been persuaded of the wisdom of letting me know what rumors are floating around.”

“I can see that.” Ilseng’s feet are bare except for his bandages; they’re too swollen to fit into shoes.

“Would you like to ask him about Harrison?”

“I’m sure you have already.”

“I thought you might like to hear it from the horse’s mouth, as it were. Trust issues,” he reminds John with a bland smile.

“I’m not an interrogator.”

Mycroft chuckles. “Oh, he’s quite cooperative.”

Sighing, John takes the proffered prox card and lets himself into the interview room. Ilseng takes in his mild appearance and casual clothing and grins; he has expensive and blindingly white caps.

“The good cop, eh?”

“I’m not here to cane your feet, if that’s what you mean.”

His lip curls at the sight of John’s shoes – maybe brown isn’t appropriate for the setting – but Ilseng shrugs. “We might get along.”

An acquisitions agent, Mycroft had said. The slave trade was relatively new territory for the Cartel and Ilseng must be higher up than the term ‘middling officer’ suggests if he is on Mycroft’s radar at all; he could have had something to do with Helena’s mother ending up where she did.

“I don’t think so.”

Indifferent, Ilseng snorts and leans back in his chair, grunting in pain when it puts pressure on his abused feet.

Conscious of Mycroft watching from the observation booth, John sits down across from Ilseng. “Tell me about Harrison.”

Ilseng sneers. “I already told the bad cops.”

John keeps his face neutral and deliberately extends his legs. Ilseng whimpers as John’s heels come to rest on his broken arches with just enough weight that pulling away would be more painful than taking it.

“Fucking— I told them everything I know! Jesus fuck!”

Point made, John eases off. “Tell me.”

Red-faced and glaring, Ilseng does. “He’s got a stranglehold on all the international lines of supply. Every shipment for a month got made or came in empty. He offered a deal to the bosses – full autonomy if they put everyone at his disposal.”

“He didn’t want a cut?”

“He’s got a million kilos of coke and heroin alone at his disposal,” Ilseng says, clearly thinking John is being insufferably ignorant. “It’s not hard to find pushers or clients.”

“Right, he’s not after drug money.”

Ilseng can’t keep the disdain off his face but refrains from saying as much. “He wants Britain on a string like he has every other country.”

John sits up straighter. “Harrison already has the rest of the world, then?”

“I just said that, didn’t I?”

“Why keep Britain for last?”

“Fuck if I know.” Ilseng leans forward, a salesman’s grin in place even though the flush of pain hasn’t fully receded from his cheeks. “What I do know is that he’s got the bosses by the short and curlies. As long as Harrison stays top of the shit pile, they have to take his deal. No way around it.”

“As long as he’s king.” It dawns on John and he laughs at how obvious it is. “That’s why you’re here, why you’re cooperating – stirring up fear. If someone else takes him out, the Cartel’s free and clear. If they try and fail, you can still take the deal and keep going, business as usual.” 

Ilseng smirks and doesn’t contradict him.

“What have you heard about Harrison, personally?”

“He’s invisible until he wants you to see him kill you. He likes a personal kill, does Harrison.” Ilseng’s still grinning, just to be macabre, or maybe to disguise how disturbing he truly finds Harrison’s modus operandi. “If he really likes you, he cuts you open and takes your insides when he leaves.”

Unshaken, John crosses his arms. “Sounds like he’s seen _Silence of the Lambs_ too many times.”

Ilseng looked amused in spite of himself. “Is that all? Are you going to help me out?”

John pauses on his way out. “If I know anything about Harrison, he’ll know what you were doing here and you’ll be first in the line of fire. Which do you prefer between never properly walking again and having your liver eaten with a nice Chianti?”

“Fuck you.”

“That’s what I thought.”

He feels strangely elated during the short trip back to the observation booth. Mycroft’s presence, of course, drains him instantly.

“I must admit I’m impressed how quickly you picked up on the two key pieces of intelligence. You might just make it in the consultant business yet.”

“Fuck you, Mycroft.” John slaps the key card onto the desk and crosses his arms. “Are you taking the shot?”

“I was waiting for your input, of course.”

“Right, well. You’re going to do whatever you were going to do anyway, so I’ll just waste my breath. Put the Cartel bosses on the line. You heard Ilseng, you’ve seen the police reports – Harrison likes to kill up close and personal. And if Ilseng’s telling the truth about Britain being the last frontier to conquer, he’s going to want to savor it all the more. You must have informants who will know if anyone gets a cigar in the mail. Maybe Harrison’s too good to get caught in a simple sting, but there’s no other way to know where he’s going to be. Assuming I have all the pertinent facts, of course.”

The recording officer is doing an admirable job of pretending she can neither see nor hear them. Her eyes never leave her equipment, despite the fact that Ilseng certainly couldn’t make a break for freedom even if he was stupid enough to try.

Mycroft peers closely at him. “Someone will almost certainly die.”

“Then try to make it one of the Cartel.”

Mycroft laughs. John is sure he must be laughing at him, somehow, but can’t bring himself to care enough to try to puzzle it out. He aches to go home and hold Ellie, go to Newham and hold Mary. 

“Will you let me know when you decide?”

“I’ll let you know when you are needed.”

That’s not the same thing, but it’s more than John expected to get.

Mary doesn’t mind that he’s almost two hours later than he said he would be and still leaves to get back to Baker Street before Ellie goes to bed. John thinks he might love her.

* * *

“That was bloody fucking brilliant, that was,” Dakko declares, still high on the adrenalin. One of the targets beat him about the helmet with a cricket bat before Dakko shot him fatally, so it’s deserved.

Police work is better than the military that way. The rules are so much clearer on the front lines of London, and the rule-breakers – or at least the ones the AFOs see – are nearly impossible to see as anything but cancer in their communities. John used to be a doctor; he knows just how ugly and destructive cancer can be.

“We should get tattoos,” Dakko decides, giddy and practically shaking out of his skin. “It’s a fraternal thing, you know? I’ve got one from my unit. We should have one, the three of us.”

“What the fuck are we, ornamental clocks?” To punctuate the interjection, Sommer punches Dakko in a bruised shoulder with intentional force.

“Goddamn it, Tim, you’ll ruin my wanking arm. You want in?”

Popping the tab on the energy drink Gutnik tosses him with one hand, Sommer grins. “Nah, you can’t trust none of them needles, mate. Make a footie team instead.”

“We’ve only got three!” Dakko waves a hand dismissively at Sommer’s retreating back. “Makes no fucking sense. You in, O’Ma? Come on, Cap, what do you say?”

“Let’s talk about it tomorrow,” John suggests with the patience of someone with practice in dealing with irrational people. “I’ve got to get home to my little girl right now.”

“Oh, yeah. Jesus, I keep forgetting you’re a dad.”

“You’re punch-drunk, Dakko. Is Pat taking you home?”

Dakko giggles and trips over an uneven bit of sidewalk. It might be a concussion, but then again, Dakko’s a performer. He’s probably much more alert than he appears as he leans into John.

“You should come with us, Cap. Play chaperone. He might take advantage.”

O’Mahoney scoffs amicably. “You wish.” Unnecessarily hauling Dakko’s arm around his neck, he nods to John. “See you on the morrow, Watson.”

“We’re going to get tattoos tomorrow after, so keep the babysitter late.”

“Right.” 

Hopefully Dakko will lose interest once his brain chemistry normalizes. John has no intention of being pressured into getting a tattoo. It just looks silly in a man his age, and he has no reason to be desperate.

* * *

He tries to bring Mary and Ellie closer together, but it’s like herding cats. Ellie likes Mary well enough, but she craves a level of demonstrative affection that Mary doesn’t give. That’s not to say that Mary doesn’t care for Ellie. She never ignores Ellie’s presence and listens with patient enthusiasm when Ellie wants to attempt an epic rendition of her day in her limited vocabulary, but Mary mostly keeps her physical distance.

John’s been ruminating on the issue lately because he thinks he should ask Mary to marry him. They’re good together and he thinks Mary keeps the buffer between herself and Ellie because she’s uncertain how long she might be in their lives and doesn’t want to hurt Ellie’s psyche any more than it is. It’s quite thoughtful, actually, but it won’t be necessary if they commit.

She had accepted his unprecedented decision to take in Ellie and laughed off a skirt ruined by spilled juice. She doesn’t mind that, between the blue berets and consulting on the Harrison project, his working hours are often irregular and demanding. She knows everything about him and doesn’t pity him or make assumptions about them or look at the bullet hole-pocked smiley face on the sitting room wall like she wishes he would paper over it. 

She’s perfect.

* * *

Mrs. Hudson pats him fondly on the shoulder when he and Mary come back from lunch. Having Ellie to look after seems to have helped her move on from Sherlock’s death; she also seems relieved that he gives every appearance of having adjusted in the aftermath. John has given up hope of convincing her that he and Sherlock were strictly platonic friends and counts himself lucky that at least she has taken to Mary.

“She still needs her nap, dear,” Mrs. Hudson sympathetically tells him as she leaves. Ellie will likely pitch a fit, so she’s wise to escape while she can.

The terror herself is in the kitchen, wearing protective goggles and an enormously oversized white lab coat with the sleeves rolled up nearly to the shoulder seam so she can use her hands to pour dirty paint water from one plastic cup into another. It would be adorable – he would take a picture on his phone – except it looks like she knows enough about a dead man to mimic him.

“Well, this is a new game, eh, Ellie?”

Water slops onto the floor as she trips on her trailing hem in getting up to hug him hello. He catches her and picks her up to his hip. The lab coat has a Bart’s logo on the breast pocket, so John doesn’t have to wonder where Mrs. Hudson found it.

“Play, Daddy? Mrs. Hudson say, sayed you do science. You do?”

“She _said_. Maybe in a bit. Say hello to Mary?”

“Hello, Miss Mary,” Ellie parrots dutifully.

“Hello, Miss Ellie.”

“Need, um.” Ellie pats the side of her goggles, knocking them askew, as she searches for the word. “Need glasses. Play, Daddy.”

“Okay, just give me a minute to say goodbye to Mary.” To explain. 

“Bye, bye.” Obligatory interactions completed, Ellie returns to her mess in the making.

All the way down the stairs, John thinks frantically how he can assure Mary that he really isn’t obsessed with Sherlock’s memory.

“Look, that’s not—she can’t even pronounce his name. I mean,” he mentally kicks himself. “I did not teach her that.”

Mary looks amused and a little sad. “Did you think I was going to be jealous? John, it’s fine. Really. Sherlock was important to you, your best friend, and you respected him. There’s no reason for you to not tell Ellie about him.”

Her kiss tastes like the chocolate mints that came with the check. “Anyway, we need more women in the hard sciences.”

“You’re perfect,” he tells her. “I love you.”

“I have to get back,” she whispers, fingers digging into his shoulder before she lets go. Mary doesn’t say it back like she usually does.

It’s just odd enough to puncture the swell of happiness in John’s chest. The front door closes and he feels cold. He climbs upstairs slowly, wondering what had happened.

“Come play!” Ellie orders imperiously from the kitchen.

The familiarity of that makes it suddenly apparent: Nothing has changed in this room in three years. Everything is where he and Sherlock agreed (where Sherlock dictated) it should go. The only thing missing is the Belstaff on the coat hook by the door. 

He has been clinging, unconsciously, irrationally. There’s a whole hell of a lot of space between mentioning an absent friend and preserving the last physical impressions of that friend and living surrounded by them.

Mary’s not stupid. John likes to think he’s not stupid, either, but he’ll clearly have to rethink that assessment.

And she seemed _perfect_.

“Ellie, Daddy has to run an errand.” Before she can protest, he adds, “Get some shoes on and leave the goggles at home.”

* * *

They go to the Diogenes Club because it’s where John found Mycroft the last time he finally realized the depths of the man’s amoral scheming. He hopes that cutting short playtime and Ellie’s delayed nap will result in a tantrum that will be spoken of in these halls with greater fear than the 1972 incident. 

Luckily, he doesn’t get the chance to stew in his fury because Mycroft is in his office.

He takes one look at John’s expression and sits up straighter. “Ah.”

John takes a moment to remind himself why he brought Ellie as he closes the door with a sharp snap. “I honestly cannot decide which is worse, this or—before.”

“John—”

“I was going to _propose_.”

“Perhaps you still should.”

“Perhaps—” John gapes. “Are you out of your fu—are you _mental_? You sent her!”

“John, are you certain you want to have this conversation in front of your daughter?”

Fear and confusion have made Ellie uncharacteristically quiet. He feels badly about that, he really does, but he’s not letting her out of his sight. John lifts her to his hip and lets her huddle against his chest. “You would not enjoy this conversation if she wasn’t here.”

“I assure you I’m not enjoying it now.” Mycroft sighs; he looks tired and strained. His hair looks thinner than John remembers it. “Everything she told you was true.”

“I think I would remember if she had casually mentioned you sent her to sleep with me.”

“That’s not the point. That was a lie of omission. Her personality, her affection – none of that was false.”

“The hell it wasn’t!”

Ellie flinches when Mycroft slams a hand down angrily on his desk. “For God’s sake, what was I supposed to do? Do you know how many times you visited my brother’s grave the first year?”

“That is not the _point_ , Mycroft! You can’t just meddle in people’s lives like this! You can’t prostitute everyone who works for you!”

“I never ordered her to get this close.” His nostrils flare as Mycroft breathes deeply and regains his composure. “It wasn’t supposed to go this far.”

“Well, maybe you should stick to finding good child psychologists and forged documents because your grand plans seem to be falling apart left and right!”

His shouting is making Ellie tremble. Hugging her tighter, John storms out. Mycroft doesn’t try to stop him.

* * *

There had been a half-formed fear in John’s mind that Mycroft would stop making up the difference in the rent, stop providing Ellie’s treatment. When the next appointment with Dr. Kelley passes without comment about a new payment method, John has half a mind to refuse the aid on principle. But he can’t pay for the flat and the therapy both, so he resigns himself to hypocrisy.

While he’s out the next day, the things of hers that have found their way into his closet and his bathroom disappear.

Under the impression that it’s only a breakup, Mrs. Hudson brings him tea and says it isn’t fair that a good man like John hasn’t had better fortunes. Greg takes one look and demands to know what Mycroft did this time, which John supposes is something of a comfort. The lads at work suggest going on a pub-crawl, and John has to remind himself that getting pissed is not a legitimate reason for letting someone else do his job of parenting Ellie.

When Mary texts him asking for a meeting, John decides not to go; his grip on sobriety is weak enough as it is. Somehow he ends up at the coffee shop she named at ten on a Sunday morning, anyway.

She looks exactly the same. He has missed her bright laughter and the smell of her lotion.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, John.” Mary certainly appears sorry, but he can’t trust her. “You must hate me.”

“Not as much as I hate your boss.” 

Wincing at his tone, she looks down and shuffles her feet. “Look, it wasn’t supposed to be like this. I really did like you. Do like you. I would never have said it if I didn’t mean it.”

“Is Mary your real name? No,” he holds up a hand to forestall her answer. “It doesn’t matter. You lied. He must have shown you the notes he stole from my therapist; you must know I don’t like people lying to me.”

“I always knew it would end this way, you know,” she tells him, smiling bitterly. “You’re a lot cleverer than you give yourself credit for. I knew I could never keep you but I held on anyway. Even if I—well. We want different things. You and Ellie deserve more, better.”

His instinct is to tell her she was more than good enough, that this is no one’s fault, except the second half of that is a blatant lie. She has seen every one of his weaknesses – playing at Sherlock’s grave, insomnia and night terrors, lifting a sleeping Ellie gently so as not to wake her. She looked even though she knew he would find out.

“Is that everything you wanted to say?”

“Is there anything _you_ want to say?”

John considers telling her to stay away from him and Ellie, but he figures she can guess as much.

She accepts his silence with a nod and a deep breath in. “Look, since I’ll probably never see you again – I met Sherlock once. Well, I saw him loads of times and once got a personal insult. I know what people called him, what he called himself, but you got it right about him. I understand.” Her gaze is clear and earnest. “I work for a sociopath and Sherlock Holmes was completely human. I just wanted you to know that.”

He waits, but that seems to be the end of it; John turns and goes home.

* * *

John takes Ellie to the cemetery with a picnic lunch instead of the violin. They sit under the tree with their sandwiches and he explains for the first time who Sherlock was and why they come here.

She can’t yet comprehend the idea of death, but John finally has accepted the fact that he won’t be able to let go of that chapter of his life. When she’s older, Ellie might understand.

* * *

Long after John should have gone to bed if he wants to be sharp for his recertification exams, Greg comes pounding up the stairs. John glares and crosses his fingers that Ellie is still asleep.

“Burris found a Gurkha cigar in his private wall safe. I’ll stay with Ellie if you need to go.”

Already John is pulling on his shoes. “Mycroft sending a car?”

Greg grimaces apologetically. “It’s outside.”

“What in the world is going on?” Mrs. Hudson looks between them and clutches her dressing gown closed with worry. “You’ll wake the whole neighborhood.”

“Sorry, Mrs. Hudson.”

“I have to go. Emergency. Lestrade will be here in case Ellie gets up before I come back.” John grips her shoulders and kisses her on the forehead. Mrs. Hudson’s hand flutters against his elbow and her eyes might be a bit misty, but she doesn’t argue.

“Might as well wait up, too, now I’m wide awake. You be careful, Doctor Watson!”

“Yeah, watch your back,” Greg agrees fervently. He could be talking about Harrison or Mycroft.

It does nothing to soothe John’s jangling nerves on the ride over to remember he hasn’t updated his will to plan for a guardianship for Ellie. That Mycroft would surely take care of it in the event of his death is a comfort he would prefer he didn’t have to take.

At the operation command center, John gears up in the same sort of uniform he wears as an ARV team member – in fact, he wouldn’t put it past Mycroft that it’s the exact uniform that should be in his locker. He also gets a gun and an earwig that buzzes with the multiple teams coordinating positions around Burris’s location. 

In what John can only assume is as sincere an apology as he’s going to get, Mycroft has arranged for John to be positioned inside the building. On the off chance that there is actually any action tonight, it’ll be there.

Privately, John suspects that Harrison’s ego will compel him to go after Burris when he sees the trap they’ve laid. Geniuses need to prove themselves when others try to stop them.

Burris is in a panic room guarded on the outside by two non-government security contractors and won’t let anyone else near the panic room entrance. Everyone on the channel, however, still has to suffer his demands for frequent updates on the situation.

An hour drags by, and then two. Even Burris has calmed down some from his earlier blatant panic and is alleviating boredom by threatening and insulting the Met in turns. John’s sure he’s not the only one who would love an excuse to knock him unconscious.

Just before three in the morning, Burris interrupts the routine roll call and it’s clear from his sudden gasping and choking that something has gone wrong.

“Help me! Burning— The bastard did something…to the cigar. Can’t—can’t breathe!”

John checks in to let his coordinating officer know he’s leaving his post upstairs to give whatever medical attention he can to Burris. The guards are pounding on the door – only Burris has the all-clear codes – but the slurring of Burris’s speech over the radio points to a neurotoxin robbing him of muscle control. He might not even be able to stand up.

“Watson, the override is 7715PW8-pound-0. Do you copy?”

Of course, Mycroft never knowingly allows people their secrets. “Copy, 7715PW8-pound-0.”

He has gotten as far as the fourth digit when an alarm goes up from one of the others stationed in the building – unknown intruder on the upper floor; Blomquist is down. Snarling curses, John gets the door open as quickly as he can. Burris’s bodyguards won’t let him near enough to do anything medically useful, so he recalls the layout of the building from his rounds and races toward where the other officers are chasing Harrison. Maybe the paramedics will get there in the undoubtedly brief window between the guards realizing Burris desperately needs help and his death. 

There are no shots fired, but the others are close enough to give a description: white male, six foot, black hair, black top, grey trousers, handgun.

As other officers check in with their locations, it becomes clear that, barring any surprises, the intruder will run out of options in a darkened corridor on the first floor. Park is already in position at the terminal end, down on one knee and half concealed by the corner with his rifle raised; John takes a covering position on the other side of the doorway and they wait, listening over the radio as the officers herd the target closer.

This is far too easy; Harrison must have broken his pattern and sent a stooge. Or it is Harrison and he means to get caught as part of a larger play.

They don’t fire when the door at the far end bursts open; a stray bullet might hit another officer and their orders are to capture if possible. Park announces their presence with a command to drop his weapon, and Harrison skids to a halt and spins back around. Hemmed in, he warily backs away from the three gunmen following him into the corridor. He does have a pistol in his right hand, but it stays pointed at the floor.

Fully aware he’s ignoring protocol and basic sense, John steps forward. In the sudden silence except for everyone’s heavy breathing, he orders the man to surrender. Harrison (It couldn’t be him, could it?) turns his head just enough to show he’s paying attention; some of his gelled hair has fallen out of its coif and over his cheek. There’s a coiled wire from his own comm-link curling along his neck and under his shirt collar.

Adrenalin humming, skin tingling, John steps closer and repeats the order, “Drop your weapon and put your hands behind your head.”

Harrison allows the Browning to tumble carelessly to the floor. Its clatter echoes in the narrow space. He slowly raises his hands in compliance and plucks the earbud free to dangle over his shoulder without being asked.

“Now, slowly walk towards the sound of my voice.”

There’s a rustle from behind him as Park moves closer for the arrest. Harrison takes cautious steps backward. Less than three meters away, he begins to turn, slowly and deliberately.

John should tell him to stop, to keep facing the other way. If it were any other target, he would; he wants to see this man’s face. He thinks he would recognize Moriarty’s insanity in his eyes if it were Harrison. That would be reason enough to put a bullet through his head.

He turns fully and their eyes meet.

It is truly Harrison.

John does not kill him.

Instead, he drops his rifle slightly and shoots Sherlock through the thigh.


	4. Synthesis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _He lives_! Praise be to Godtiss!

If John had ever entertained the idea of Sherlock somehow surviving his fall and spending three years away from Baker Street and all the people who try to make certain he eats with semi-regularity, he would have expected Sherlock to look even more shockingly lithe than he was when they first met. Harrison is by no means heavy or bulky, but he certainly is more solidly built than Sherlock Holmes was. 

That makes sense, John supposes abstractedly. He needed to look the part of a mercenary, like someone who could kill with his bare hands.

It also means that there is ample muscle on his thigh for John to aim at and avoid nicking the bone or femoral artery. 

He probably would have tried to walk out under his own power but John hands his rifle off to Park and yanks Sherlock’s arm around his shoulders to steer him out at a punishing clip. His sidearm is in between them, digging into both of their hips and much more accessible to Sherlock than it is to John.

Still, muscle requires a significant blood supply and the leg of Sherlock’s trousers is stained a deep red down to his boot by the time they get to the ambulance that originally was for Burris. John remembers how it feels to have a boot full of one’s own blood and can’t bring himself to feel contrite. 

Sherlock doesn’t say anything directly to him, even though John rides in the ambulance with him to the hospital and Sherlock keeps sneaking sideways glances or staring outright. John wonders how much of the past thirty months is visible in his face and clothing; he doesn’t know if he wants Sherlock to keep his mouth shut or prove his authenticity with a long, arrogant deduction.

He stays in the room while the nurses cut off Sherlock’s trousers to clean and stitch the through-and-through bullet wound. Nobody questions his presence, and John has not doubted for a moment since he saw Harrison head-on that Myrcoft knew. The Holmes brothers have been cooperating throughout this whole affair.

When Mycroft strolls in, Sherlock rolls his eyes and very obviously notes his brother’s increased girth. Mycroft puts his nose in the air and tells John without looking at him, “Blomquist is awake and being discharged as we speak. The bodyguards are quite ill but should suffer no lasting effects. Burris is dead.”

“Obviously,” Sherlock enunciates crisply, managing to look down his nose from the gurney. “I intended as much.”

“Obviously,” John echoes, and restrains himself from punching them both in the jaw.

Sherlock looks over at him as though remembering John is still there. Except that it’s Harrison looking at him – Harrison who is more physical than Sherlock and has straight hair that’s cut in a modern style, still hanging bedraggled over a less-sharp cheekbone.

“It wasn’t in the cigar. Aerosolized saxitoxin released into the panic room through the air filtration system _triggered_ by the cigar smoke.”

“You let him think he was in the clear knowing that he would smoke the cigar and cause his own death. By shellfish poisoning.”

He’s very plainly pleased with the neatness of this scheme. Only grudgingly does he admit, “I did have a little bit of assistance since I was abroad until about twelve hours ago. One of Mycroft’s helper monkeys actually planted the toxin.”

After considering this, John nods and leaves without another word. 

His involvement with the fake sting was not strictly official; he could go straight home.

The poison was in the air in the panic room. John announced his position over the radio, which he’s sure that Sherlock either hacked or Mycroft made available to him, and Harrison was spotted just as John had been in danger of rushing inside and exposing himself.

Hardly anything is ever an accident with a Holmes.

So, John gets himself a well-deserved cup of tea and waits.

* * *

“Just over twenty-eight months,” Mycroft says in answer to a question John hasn’t asked.

“That was long after the burial,” John points out, feeling uncharitable.

“I did not want to take that from you.”

A highly inappropriate giggle loosens a not inconsiderable portion of the tension in John’s shoulders. “No, just nearly three years of my life.”

Mycroft arches an intrigued brow. “Sherlock will be privately delighted that you share his astronomically high opinion of himself.”

Without rancor, John invites Mycroft to kindly piss off.

As usual, Mycroft ignores him. “Is he welcome at Baker Street?”

“Does he even want to come back?”

“Oh, I doubt if even Sherlock knows that. Left to his own devices, he’ll either never suggest it or barge back in like he ever owned the place to begin with.” The umbrella tip taps thoughtfully against the floor. “I’ll be interested to see the depth of your capacity to forgive.” And he leaves – as always, practically oozing self-satisfaction, – before John has the chance to tell him where he can stick his interest.

* * *

Somebody had given Sherlock a cane, and John wonders with no small amount of trepidation what Sherlock has planned that he accepted it.

Sherlock notices him immediately, of course. He limps over warily, like John might do something completely unpredictable; John has a sudden strong urge to punch him right in his stitches.

They don’t speak; Sherlock watches him and John tries to watch back but he keeps getting distracted by Harrison’s strange hair.

“Mycroft told me you joined the blue berets.” Sherlock purses his lips in displeasure. “I’m sure he’s ruined quite a few things for you, as well.”

“He hasn’t got a monopoly on it.” 

They both look down. Some of Sherlock’s blood had seeped through his trousers onto John’s, but it’s hardly visible on the black.

“Mrs. Hudson’s going to be furious with you.”

As though he has just realized that other people might notice if he comes back from the dead, Sherlock frowns.

“And how exactly does one go about doing that, exactly? Sure, you can get a death certificate nullified but how are you going to explain the fact that you disappeared and then reappeared at the same time that Harrison dies?”

“Harrison’s not going to die.”

John blinks. “Oh.”

“No, no,” Sherlock flaps a hand in annoyance. “ _I’m_ not going to keep doing this. Anybody can be Harrison. He can be locked up in one of Mycroft’s nonexistent detention facilities until necessary and put away again as soon as he’s done whatever needed doing.”

“Oh. So, Harrison’s the bogeyman. An assassin bogeyman. That’s—”

“Of course it is,” interrupts Sherlock, impatiently sweeping his bangs back into place. The motion is so very different from the mussing flick he used to do when a lead was becoming tiresome. 

John clears his throat. “Right. I’m headed off. Do you have—”

“Yes.”

When there’s nothing after that, John rolls his eyes. “Right, you’re coming over tomorrow. Someone has to be there to make sure you don’t give Mrs. Hudson a heart attack.”

Sherlock quickly conceals his surprise. “Is the bullet wound enough, or should I expect Lestrade to punch me?”

Feeling cheerful for the first time since he left home, John shrugs. “I’m not sure the bullet wound is enough for me.”

* * *

Lestrade had left at seven to get ready for work and left a note of apology for leaving Ellie with only Mrs. Hudson sleeping downstairs. It had been less than an hour, though, and Ellie has only just woken up when John gets out of the shower.

“Ready for breakfast, love?”

“Eggs!”

He chuckles and gives in to her outstretched arms. “Eggs, what?”

“Eggs, please!”

“You, at least, can be taught.”

“Yes,” she agrees blithely, and hugs his neck.

“Sunday?” she wonders from her seat on the tabletop as he cracks eggs.

John had forgotten all about his recertification trials. “No,” he sighs, and whisks quickly, the sooner to get on the phone to Orman or Mullur or somebody to try to explain. “Yesterday was Wednesday, so today is…?”

She makes a show of scrunching up her face in thought. “Saturday?”

“Thursday.”

He wonders if Sherlock will interpret ‘tomorrow’ to mean later today or Friday. If it isn’t today, then he doesn’t have Sherlock’s number to tell him what time John will be off work.

And at some point, he’s going to have to ease Mrs. Hudson into the idea of Sherlock being back. Then again, she’s a tough old broad; Sherlock might have to worry about a smack from her, too.

Thankfully, looking after Ellie takes up enough of John’s attention that he can’t spend too much time agonizing over his own feelings.

* * *

Mrs. Hudson does smack Sherlock. Several times, in fact, while berating him for being “cruel and beastly.” Then she bursts into tears and covers her eyes with both hands. Sherlock gently grips her shoulders and pulls her closer. It’s not a hug because her hands are still concealing her face, but Mrs. Hudson sobs more loudly against his chest and Sherlock presses a brief kiss to the top of her head.

John doesn’t know how anybody could mistake this (admittedly emotionally stunted) idiot for a sociopath.

She waves them upstairs saying, “I’m too old and wise to stay cross at you too long. But you had better be good for poor John! Do you need me to watch Ellie, dear?” she asks John. 

“She should be fine, but thanks.”

Several times John has to restrain himself from looking around to verify that Sherlock – hair back to curly but still wearing Harrison’s clothes, which is a jarring combination, – really is following him upstairs. “Um, Ellie is—”

“Your daughter, John. Yes, I know.”

“So, Mycroft—”

“No.” His mouth twists in something that was perhaps supposed to be a smile but turns out not even as good as his artificial ‘normal person’ smile. “That one he left a surprise. Only thing she could be, though. Obvious.”

Although John waits for some further comment, maybe asking after Ellie’s mother, Sherlock doesn’t say anything. He steps into 221B like it’s a crime scene, his gaze sliding around and lingering on the most interesting bits – John’s new mug on the desk next to his computer, the armchairs still facing each other before the hearth, cards from Ellie’s second birthday that John’s been meaning to take off the mantle for ages, the child’s jacket tossed carelessly on the couch arm.

Struggling not to try to guess what he’s concluding from these details, John heads to the kitchen. “Tea?”

Sherlock hums indifferently, which John chooses to interpret as assent. He focuses as closely as he can on the task to keep his strange nervousness in check. When he finally brings the cup out, Sherlock is standing somewhat awkwardly in the middle of the room, hands clasped behind him. John sets the mug on the side table next to Sherlock’s chair and sits in his own.

As Sherlock sits and takes an uncharacteristically obliging sip, John suddenly realizes he only assumes Sherlock still takes his tea the same way he did three years ago. He continues to try to reconcile this man with one he knew once, and never mind the fact that John certainly has changed over the past few years, himself. Perhaps the new Sherlock, the re-Sherlock, is more like Harrison than like the original model.

There is no comment about the tea. A considering furrow forms between Sherlock’s brows and he steeples his fingers, studying John intently. “Do you want to know how I did it?”

“Did what?”

Sherlock huffs in exasperation. “Survived, John, do keep up.”

If John had his cup in his hand at that moment, he fancies he might have shattered it. “No, Sherlock. I don’t want to know. _Ever_.”

“But—”

“For God’s sake, Sherlock! Has it occurred to you that it might not be in your best interests to gloat about the day you made me watch your fake suicide?”

Not the least cowed by John’s snapping, Sherlock looks puzzled. “But you didn’t figure it out.”

“I would have come to shoot you a long time ago if I had.”

“Why don’t you want to know?” 

When John doesn’t answer, Sherlock grows frustrated. “Why did you tell me to come here if you don’t want to know? Is Lestrade coming over and as soon as he knows I’m alive and shouted a bit, you’ll send me away?”

“What?” John shakes his head in bewilderment. “Sherlock, what are you talking about?”

“You’re being illogical, John,” Sherlock accuses. “I know you’re not satisfied yet with the punishment but I see no reason to accept it unless you will be satisfied at some point. I would have thought you would consider yourself better than such petty taunting.”

“What the hell are you— How am I taunting you? I just don’t want to think about the day I watched my best friend kill himself!”

“Well, yes, it looked like that.” Sherlock flaps a dismissive hand. “But now you know I’m not dead.”

John gapes. He didn’t think it was possible for Sherlock to not understand this. He wants to demand Sherlock explain the phone call – there had been _emotion_ in his voice, John is sure of it, – but he can already predict how that will go; the magician has to direct the audience’s attentions in the wrong direction to perform the illusion.

“Mary Morstan,” he says finally. “Does that name mean anything to you?”

Sherlock makes a face like he smells something mildly irritating. “Is she a case I worked? Victim or client? I told you, John, it doesn’t matter who they are.” He pauses in consideration, eyes narrowing in shrewd attention. “She must be somehow relevant and probably immediately so; your mind is too pedestrian and slow to have gone far afield. Is it that woman with the disappearing fiancée?”

“No, she’s not.” John can’t keep from grinning, in spite of the callous dismissal of humanity and the personal insult. It clearly infuriates Sherlock, which is no incentive to stop.

“This is a stupid—” Sherlock’s mouth snaps shut and his expression closes off into an indifferent, somewhat bored mask. His eyes are fixed somewhere over John’s shoulder as he sits back in his chair in feigned mildness.

Ellie is hiding very poorly behind the kitchen wall and giggles in guilt when John catches her. He hopes she hasn’t heard much. 

“Come here, love.” He holds out a hand in invitation. Of course, she’s a toddler and following instructions is hit and miss on a good day. John realizes he will be horribly embarrassed if Ellie disobeys now.

Hopefully, Sherlock doesn’t appear to notice his relief when Ellie comes out into the open and tries to use his arm as leverage to climb over the chair arm into his lap. When he kisses her temple, her hair smells like her strawberry shampoo and a bit like eggs, because she sometimes gets playful with food.

“Ellie, this is Sherlock Holmes.”

“Sher-law?”

“Yes, Sherlock.” John is grateful he doesn’t blush easily.

“Park?”

“Not today, Ell. Sherlock, this is Helena. My daughter.”

Sherlock hasn’t moved. His hands are emphatically relaxed on his chair arms and he’s staring at Ellie. The last child with whom John saw Sherlock interact implicated him in a kidnapping.

He jerks minutely as he returns to the conversation. “Yes, of course it is.”

“ _She_ ,” John corrects tersely. 

“Isn’t that what I said? It doesn’t matter. I really must be going.” Sherlock stands and doesn’t seem to know what to do without a jacket to button. He decides on just nodding with finality and saying John’s name in farewell.

“Wait, Sherlock.” He stands and sets down Ellie, who promptly latches onto his leg. “You can’t just rush off. I can’t—I mean, what’s next? Are you coming back? You can’t just go off again without—”

He can’t think of any outstanding obligations. The sentence hangs, unfinished, in the air.

Sherlock is clearly regretting his lack of suit and coat; there is nothing to occupy his hands and make him look nonchalant. “Lestrade still needs the crutch, of course,” he says in the end. 

“Yes,” John agrees, relieved. “Obviously.”

Not looking at him, Sherlock frowns and tugs at his cuffs. He inhales like he’s about to speak but voices nothing.

John can’t keep himself from pressing, “You’ll come back, then? Here, I mean.”

“I never liked the basement unit.”

“Oh!” John winces. “No, that’s not what I meant. I just meant for a visit sometime.”

Sherlock wrinkles his nose at the idea of doing something so ordinary.

“No, okay.”

“No, I could—”

John laughs at the pained dismay on Sherlock’s face as he tries to force the words out. “Really, it’s not—at least give me your mobile. Just in case.” 

Their relationship could never work like that, limited to occasional chats over coffee or a beer. John knows that that. It’s all or nothing with Sherlock. He asks anyway, because he doesn’t know how to not crave; he has forgotten that he knows how to live without.

“You’re still using your sister’s phone. Same charging cable.” Sherlock waves a hand back toward the desk and the incriminating cord. “That stain from the bleaching accident, hard to miss. I know the number.”

He’s afraid that leaving it up to Sherlock will mean a call will never come; he’s afraid that might be the best way to end this cleanly as it needs to do. So, John lets him leave. Either the lack of a swirling coat or the slight limp diminishes Sherlock’s long stride, and John finds it strangely distressing.

* * *

Greg takes it better than John thought he might.

“I’ll kill that bastard,” he growls, fists clenching. “The fucking pair of them!”

John wants to smile indulgently; Greg’s bark is much worse than his bite because he secretly likes being along for the ride almost as much as John does, though he manages to stay on the right side of sanity while doing so. “And Molly.”

“What, _she_ was in on it?” He’s so surprised that he almost forgets to be livid. “I see her all the time!”

“He’d have needed somebody in the morgue,” John reasons. “And Mycroft says he didn’t know until a few weeks later.”

“Bloody hell, did everyone but me know? And that’s shit about not knowing, by the way.”

“I don’t know if Mycroft speaks any languages but lies.”

“German and French, at least. I think Mandarin, too.” Greg evaluates John with an inspector’s suspicion. “You’re being very calm about this.”

John shrugs. “I shot him. It was very cathartic.”

* * *

To eliminate shift juggling around recertification time, Orman decides that he’s going to put them all on the same cycle. Shrugging off John’s absenteeism with only an unelaborated death threat, he schedules O’Mahoney and Dakko slightly early along with John so he can menace the three of them together while they take their practical and written exams. Of course, there are several other officers there at the same time, so John feels bizarrely as though he’s back in primary school with a particularly intimidating teacher at the front the room, his hands resting on a long wooden pointer planted between his combat-booted feet like a broadsword.

The way Dakko puts his hand to his brow to conceal him talking out the side of his mouth does nothing to discourage the notion.

“I’ve given it a lot of thought.”

“First time for everything, I suppose,” O’Mahoney mumbles without looking around from his seat at the table in front of them. 

“Was I talking to you?” Dakko scoots a few inches along the bench closer to John and flashes his charismatic dimples. “We’re going to get the tattoo, yeah?”

John has a total of two years of experience of keeping Sherlock and Helena reasonably within acceptable behavioral parameters. He knows exactly how to nonverbally convey that he’s having none of this shit. “No.”

“You’re a real fucking killjoy, you know that?”

“Yep.”

There’s a crash from the front of the room as Orman breaks his stick against the desk; most everyone else flinches. “Dakko!” Orman bellows and levels the jagged end of the stick at them. “I don’t want to have to sit through you retaking this course any more than you do, so shut your goddamn mouth and stay in your own goddamn seat with your eyes on your own goddamn exam!

“O’Mahoney and Watson – stop encouraging the clot!”

All three of them pass and continue to be allowed to carry guns.

And the Met had thought he and Sherlock were dangerous amateurs.

* * *

The ghastly dramatic irony of it is, this would be so easy if John had not moved on afterward.

He sees Sherlock several times again when he comes to have Mrs. Hudson make him tea. It clearly happens quite often and she never refuses him, even if she pretends to at first. Sherlock is still wearing Harrison’s clothes and has a different coat, which is of some thin, grey fabric and much shorter than the Belstaff. 

John irrationally hates that coat. He also finds himself, when he can’t sleep and has already been through the periodic table at least twice, brooding over the quandary of whether Sherlock’s hair is naturally curly or straight. There were never any curling irons in the flat when they were living together, though the smell of singed hair would probably have flown well under his notice in comparison to the rest of the strange and more alarming odors that Sherlock managed to create. On the other hand, John has a hard time picturing Sherlock as Harrison the international criminal kingpin flat ironing his fringe in the mirror every morning for three years.

Whenever Sherlock is downstairs in 221A, Mrs. Hudson reports, he often does not finish his cup of tea and spends anywhere from twenty minutes to an hour in his thinking pose on the couch or sitting in a chair on his phone while talking to the television if it’s on. John feels inordinately guilty about the much longer couch and the skull in his flat. Then he remembers that Sherlock can and probably does break in if he wants to use them. 

Lestrade refuses to speak about Sherlock when he meets John for a beer, which John expects means that they’ve seen each other and it didn’t go very well. He is somehow still speaking to Mycroft, though, which marks him as either properly cracked or a much more mature adult than is John. According to Mycroft, Sherlock has only to say the word and have his old life back; Greg and John muse darkly on the life he has been and might be living currently.

John is too proud to confess how badly he wishes he could have their old life back again anyway, but he’s glad of the excuse of a conversational moratorium.

And he does want it all back, desperately. The absurd experiments, the mad situations they ended up in, the sleepless nights they stayed up hunting for that one piece of evidence that would make everything fit together in Sherlock’s mind, and the inevitable haring off after the perpetrator when they really shouldn’t have done – it had been insane; it had been wonderful.

He combs the snarls out of Ellie’s hair in the mornings and thinks about schools in a couple of years; it’s a different, bittersweet kind of wonderful. 

Sometimes he imagines taking the receipt back to Mycroft – he never did finalize the adoption so, technically, he’s only her guardian – and everything going back to the way it used to be at Baker Street. The year wouldn’t have to matter to Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson, not if they didn’t let it. 

More often, John imagines tearing out the paralyzed portion of his brain that would throw away every good thing he has found for himself for the sake of a man who let John think he was dead for years without a second thought. Let Sherlock dissect that bit of diseased and traitorous tissue and maybe John would read about it on his blog if he had a bit of free time. 

His life is full and rich and _still_ John wants more. He despises his own greed and ruthlessly stamps down on the persistent urge to invite Sherlock back upstairs.

Sherlock never gives any indication that he cares one way or another, except that he keeps coming to Mrs. Hudson for tea that he doesn’t drink.

* * *

“She isn’t yours.”

This is the first thing Sherlock says to John since the day after the shooting incident. It has been almost a month and the limp was unnoticeable when Sherlock walked up in clear view of the bench from which John is watching Ellie play. He had sat down on the other side of the bench and let the silence spiral for a few minutes before announcing this fact.

It would be pointless and needlessly frustrating to attempt again to impress upon Sherlock basic social graces. John just keeps his eyes front and replies lightly. “Not biologically, no.”

“Mycroft is a pestilent swine and a meddlesome arse.”

John bites the inside of his cheek to keep from sniggering. “I see you haven’t lost your touch.”

“Of course I haven’t. You didn’t ask for her.”

“Are you asking why?”

Sherlock scowls and tucks his chin inside his scarf – blue, just like before; it looks wrong with Harrison’s grey coat. “I know why.”

“Then what are we talking about?”

“Was this what you wanted? Before.” Sherlock has lost some weight since he came back to London, making his cheekbones more striking than they had been on Harrison. His eyes, however, could never change unless they were plucked out, which John vaguely knows is a shockingly morbid thought to have on a clear day at a children’s park.

“Not really.”

“It was because I left, then.”

“And I see you’re still an arrogant git as well.”

“It would be easier for you if I hadn’t come back.”

John has to take a slow, deep breath but he cannot disagree. Sherlock watches him clinically.

“Your predilection for danger and your moral principles in collision and you can’t choose.”

“Haven’t I?”

Ellie’s hair is a braid John tied an hour ago in preparation for this outing and he has a spare nappy stuffed into the inner pocket of his coat in case of emergency. She has finally mastered reciting the alphabet, can count to ten, puts on her own shoes (often on the correct feet), and John has promised her ice cream when she can use the toilet, even though that’s likely at least a year off. 

“It doesn’t count.” Sherlock pulls out a pack of cigarettes and ignores John’s silent disapproval to light one and take a long drag. “You still have your gun.”

“I told you a dozen times not to go through my things, Sherlock. Being dead doesn’t nullify the rules.”

Shrugging unconcernedly, Sherlock watches Ellie digging in the sand with a plastic shovel borrowed from one of the other children and smokes his cigarette to the filter. John only sighs when he thoughtlessly flicks the butt away.

“Do you want the skull back? Only you have to promise you won’t take it out in public.”

“You’re being sentimental, John; do shut up.”

There’s anger in his chest that John bites down on because he doesn’t want to shout in front of Ellie again. He knows what that does to children and it never works out well for them, in the end. He’s his own dire warning about doing this wrong.

“We can move out.”

“Why should you? I don’t want that. Do you think I want that? Did _Mycroft_ tell you that?”

“Jesus, calm down, Sherlock. You’re even more paranoid about your absolute tosser of a brother than I remember. Do you know if he’s going to stop paying your half of the rent now you’re alive again?”

John is proud of how offhanded he manages to sound. Sherlock looks bemused by him, as usual. 

“You’ll probably be avoiding his attempts to give you an allowance for the rest of your natural life. I only got out of it by threatening to make a scene at my knighting.”

“What sort of scene?”

“Can’t say. If I bring it up, I forfeit what little privacy I’ve managed to wrench out of Mycroft’s fat, sweaty fingers.” After a moment, Sherlock adds, “I’m afraid he is acknowledging and atoning for what he thinks is a mistake by forcing on you what I would never condone.”

John knows an apology when he hears it. “I’ll let you know if I snap and decide to kill him. I’ll need your help to get past security.”

A delighted, conspiratorial grin lights up Sherlock’s face and, even though he only sees it peripherally, something twists in John’s chest. It’s pain and guilt, and he blames Sherlock for that. If he hadn’t lied, if he hadn’t been gone for so long, there would be no one to prevent John from grasping for this second chance like he so wants to do.

“I can’t, Sherlock.” The smile falls in an instant, and John would trade anything to have a second chance at that night Mycroft had been sitting in his chair. If he had only refused to listen to what Mycroft had to say, if he had only handed back that file – John doesn’t care what else would have happened, what he would have lost or given up, if only he didn’t have to say this now.

“I can’t give her up and I can’t put her in danger.”

“You can,” Sherlock mutters mutinously. “You won’t.”

There is no point in relenting this quibble of semantics because Sherlock never listens to what anyone else says, anyway.

Abruptly, Sherlock surges to his feet and stalks away. John does not allow himself to watch him go.

* * *

He misses being able to tell Mary his secrets in the shelter of the dark.

She didn’t hear all of them, of course. His most recent secret – which will never pass his lips, – is that he would be selfish in a heartbeat. John knows Sherlock wants to come back to Baker Street. Maybe they wouldn’t be able to pick up exactly where they left off, but it would be good, surely, in any case. Three years isn’t really so much time. They would be brilliant, like burning magnesium – more than moderately dangerous, impervious to the things that would smother normal flames, and leaving everyone else with spots in their vision.

He misses Sherlock and, despite his complaints, all the ephemera, too, especially that heady experience of feeling the interest of such a man. And it wasn’t that John ever deluded himself into thinking he deserved it, but it was intoxicating all the same. There are arguably worse fixations for an addictive personality, though perhaps not many.

Then again, perhaps it is for the best that he cannot (will not) abandon Ellie. He absolutely will not do that to _his_ child. All he has left to do is convince himself of that.

* * *

There’s a press conference. Someone John doesn’t know is running it because both Lestrade and Sherlock are being publically exonerated. 

(He wasn’t going to watch, but Mrs. Hudson asked. At first, John tries to tell himself that he’s only here as her emotional support, but even in his own head that’s rubbish. So, he tells himself it isn’t too bad if he holds Ellie the whole time.)

Sherlock appears as aloof and haughty as ever, at last reunited with his traditional costume. Is it the same coat cleaned or a new one? John had looked it up once; the company doesn’t manufacture that cut anymore and it had cost fourteen hundred pounds new even before they were rare and popularized. 

Neither of them speaks on camera; someone must have known what would have happened, especially without Jiminy Cricket at his side, and banned Sherlock from access to microphones. So, Lestrade stands there looking vaguely pained and stoic while Sherlock looks down his nose at everyone who comes too close and generally projects an air of wishing for a fatal instrument for liberal application.

London is just lucky that nobody tried to get him to wear the deerstalker. 

About the time the camera pans over the other officers present and Donovan is onscreen for several seconds, expression professionally disapproving (though that could be about one reporter’s especially inane question), Ellie wriggles off John’s lap. Giving up on his and Mrs. Hudson’s attention as unavailable for the moment, she wanders off and John soon can hear her clambering upstairs to her stuffed animals and her milk cup. He has just committed to following her when the television cuts back to Sherlock. It has been a long time, but John recognizes that look of intense focus – the deducing face. Against his will, a shiver thrills up John’s spine at the sight, the expectation of getting a glimpse of what goes on in that mad head of his.

The Met spokesperson deflects an enquiry about the whereabouts of Doctor Watson and that is finally enough. John lets himself out and, sympathetic, Mrs. Hudson sees him go without fuss.

* * *

The third anniversary of that day at Barts rolls around on a dreary Tuesday. John almost decides to go visit the marble headstone over the empty grave just for the hell of it. Maybe it would remind Sherlock to apologize for everything he did.

He should have realized so much earlier. Sherlock would never just let his body get stuck in the ground somewhere. Rank sentimentality is the whole basis of cemeteries, after all. If anything, he would have donated his brain to science and let the vessel get cremated. Sherlock would have been disappointed most at the lost, impossible opportunity to run experiments on a whole cadaver that legally belonged to him. It would be novel, if nothing else.

John goes to work and Orman has the three teams race through their drills. Sommer’s group wins, for which they get bragging rights and marginally less criticism than the others. 

Afterward, John takes the Tube home and picks up Ellie from Mrs. Hudson. They eat pasta for dinner and later John coaxes Ellie into a bath. Once she’s in bed, John tries to spend a couple hours online or watching television but he ends up reading his unposted blog entries. In every one, he stresses that Sherlock was confused until he found each new piece of evidence and came to his conclusions by way of amazing but perfectly sound logical progression. _He wasn’t a fake_ , they all say. 

A liar, yes. But not a fake.

He deletes all the documents, empties the trash folder, and shuts his eyes against the periodic table that normally lulls him into sleep.

That night, he dreams that Sherlock comes home and crawls into his bed beside John, and they sleep side by side until dawn, when John tells Sherlock he has to leave and Sherlock promises he’ll come back the next night.

* * *

Sherlock’s first case after coming home is a pharmacological company that suspects one of its employees of being a corporate spy. There are only extremely terse press releases throughout the course of the investigation and its conclusion, which John interprets as Sherlock having stepped on too many toes for people to make nice for a press conference. Someone from the Met arrests the mole for a series of minor counts of trespassing and theft, one count of assaulting a police officer, and two for assault with a deadly weapon.

John loses some sleep over that. He also feels guilty when Sherlock turns up with a bandaged wrist and scraped knuckles; how did he stay alive for all those years without someone to watch out for him when he blatantly disregards personal safety? It was difficult enough with John there as support and a second set of eyes. 

Sherlock just casually puts that hand into his pocket as he raises the phone to his ear and begins to speak in staccato French, eyes narrowed in attention to whatever the person the other end is saying.

It’s a woman, and John has to take his leave quickly and focus his whole commute and much of his workday on not wondering who she is.

* * *

There is a photo on some gossipy blog that garners enough hit to warrant a place on more heavily trafficked sites. John does not know if Mycroft has let up on his surveillance or if he let it slide on purpose. It has been a while since Greg has complained about being John’s buffer but the fact that it is Mycroft lends credence to the latter theory.

Someone took it at a call in Pollards Hill. John had to liaise with the lead detective afterwards about the paperwork, as usual. In the photograph, he has taken off his helmet and his hair is dark with sweat on his temples. He doesn’t remember what the detective was saying that he is listening so intently, but he does remember her accent was Welsh and she carried herself with an attractive sort of confidence. It is a little embarrassing that she’s taller than him even in her flats, even though it hadn’t mattered one whit at the time.

They had gone in heavy with the MP5s, so John has it on the neck and shoulder strap. One hand is resting proprietorially on the butt and keeping the gun from swinging around on its leash. Several people in the comments section have apparently found this wildly provocative.

Greg sends the link two days after the original posting (Mycroft either has a debilitating head injury or is purposefully letting this slide) with a message that is a mix of teasing and lamenting. Even if he wanted to, it does not seem John can escape being part of Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson.

It gets around to his workmates, who gripe good-naturedly about being ignored while John gets all the press attention and Internet lust. In truth, they are all, with the possible exception of Davidson, smart enough to realize that celebrity is not nearly as much fun as it’s cracked up to be.

Then there is a second photo, this one of John with his Oyster card between his teeth as he pulls on his jacket on the way up the Tube station stairs on a drizzly day. The image quality isn’t as good as the first picture, a bit blurry and back-lit, but the public reception suggests that is being interpreted as an artistic choice rather than the reality of having been taken surreptitiously with a camera phone. He would be gratified by how complimentary to his physique the vast majority of comments are but John knows this is not merely a gaggle of likely far too young women being frank about their sexual interests.

Proof to point, on his way out the next morning, Sherlock is lurking in the entryway.

John feels obliged to tell him, “You know, you can come upstairs, if you like. Neither of us is toxic.”

“There’s a photographer pretending to drink the vile swill Mr. Chattergee calls coffee outside Speedy’s,” Sherlock informs him shortly, his expression carefully but not convincingly composed to boredom. “I have to go to Whitechapel later; do try to not incite lustful riots.” 

He turns on his heel and disappears back into Mrs. Hudson’s flat, which John expects Mrs. Hudson is blissfully unaware of, as she is upstairs with Ellie and would have mentioned to him if she knew Sherlock was in situ. John would like to shout something after him, but has no idea as to what he might say. Just before opening the front door, he makes a point of relaxing his face into something hopefully innocuous and not at all evidentiary of something a gossip hound would find interesting because the odds of Sherlock being wrong about the photographer outside are ones that no sane person should ever take. 

The photographer has half her head shaved and utterly fails to be inconspicuous as she fumbles for her oversized camera. She doesn’t follow him, though, so John only walks a little quicker and keeps his head turned away so she can’t get a good picture.

But he doesn’t go to work. Letting things go in the hope that they’re continue going until they’re completely gone hasn’t worked for him so far. Instead, John heads for the Diogenes Club. Ellie isn’t with him this time, and John is pretending to order himself to not take the opportunity to punch Mycroft somewhere he’ll feel it for a long time. Some things are just inevitable; he knows he’s lying when he insists that he’s a good man.

Of course, this time Mycroft isn’t there. Probably menacing somebody in a mannequin storeroom or some such nonsense for maximum effect, John thinks sourly. He sits down to wait.

Mycroft must be on his way because John hasn’t gotten a phone call from an irascible commanding officer even an hour after his shift began.

“John.” Mycroft does something with his pronunciation of simple words that makes him always sounds like he’s about to ask for something. John usually doesn’t mind playing generous, but Mycroft manages to be preternaturally irritating in a way nobody else has managed.

“You did this on purpose.”

He should have sat in Mycroft’s chair. It had been far too kind and deferential to wait before the desk like a schoolboy before his headmaster. 

“I purposefully allowed it to happen, yes.” Mycroft sets his briefcase on the desk and gives John his best look of grave consequence. “Isn’t it better to do it now?”

John wants to squeeze his eyes shut, not look down the barrel of this gun, but Mycroft was right about bravery being a nice name for stupidity. “You—you are in charge of the whole fucking world and you can’t do this one thing, the one thing that I need?”

“You overestimate my capacity to compensate for a lack of cooperation,” Mycroft reprimands him as gently as he knows how; it is by no means one of his more impressive skills. 

But he is right. If John really wanted to get away, to start over, he would have taken Ellie and left London, especially now that Sherlock has returned. Baker Street is his place, and always was. John had been allowed brief sojourn because he had been useful, though he’s sure he and Sherlock would have disagreed over how. With a child, he cannot be Doctor Watson, racing around London at all hours at another’s whim and persistently putting himself in mortal danger for the simple thrill of it.

The only reason he hasn’t gone – the only real reason – is reluctance to give up the memory of that time. If he moved away to some other place, it wouldn’t seem real anymore. His life when he was living with Sherlock was so far out of the ordinary that John just knows he’ll begin to question the truth of it without the constant reminder of Baker Street to keep it all present and real. As pathetic as it is, he’s clinging to his glory days.

Mycroft watches him, the shape of compassioned understanding on his face ruined by his blank eyes, emotion redacted. “I can put it back, John, if you just say the word. You _must_ choose.”

“You knew,” John accuses, a last, bitter attempt to displace the fault. “You knew he was going to come back and you did this to me anyway. What point were you trying to make?”

“His return was never certain, John, let alone scheduled. I had to do what I thought was best at the time.”

“The hell it— It doesn’t even matter to you, does it? I’m her _father_!”

“No, you are not.”

That is somehow enough to completely quell the righteous, protective fury nearly propelling him at Mycroft’s throat. John collapses back into his seat, resting his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. He’s aware that this is not a flashback or a panic attack but it feels just as helpless.

“Be rational about this, John.” The desk remains a barrier between them as Mycroft exhorts him in low, fervent tones. “She can have a new home with loving parents and she’ll never remember these months with you. The loss will not permanently damage her if it happens while she’s this young. Isn’t that better? Or will you force her to lose you slowly to resentment and depression as you continue to cling to a life you could have had only for the sake of your self-pride?”

John chokes on a burst of giddy, slightly hysterical laughter. He keeps his head down to hide his smile, for all the good it does. He is so very relieved to have the choice made easier like this. It’s not about his virtue anymore; it’s simple _logic_ , an if/then statement to which any sane person would agree. Of course he loves Helena, wants the best for her. If so, then he must give her up.

Nausea rolls in his gut at the same time. Isn’t it too simple for the thing he wants so badly to also be the honorable thing? Aren’t desires somehow shameful by nature? This is just the more honorable of the options, because he is too weak and selfish to do the truly noble thing.

And oh, he is, and he cannot. If he chooses to be honest with himself, John knows that he had decided the moment he took the Tube in the wrong direction this morning.

“Doctor Watson?” Mycroft questions gently, managing to put a lot of extra-textual meaning into two simple words. 

“Yeah. Yes.” John furtively checks for wetness on his cheeks before raising his head up again. Mycroft – the bastard – looks gratified.

“Yeah, I’m fine. All right, we can—not today.” He stands and flexes his fists at his sides out of uncertainty of what he should be doing with his hands. “Not today, Mycroft. I—next Monday.”

Unaffected by John’s pathetic attempt to inject some intimidation into his tone, Mycroft only lifts his chin once in acknowledgement. “Very well. You’re doing the right thing, John.”

There is so little comfort in that reassurance from this source that John almost changes his mind right there.

But he strides out before his second thoughts can be spoken and puts off figuring out what he’s going to tell Ellie – and Mrs. Hudson and Greg and Dr. Kelley and his workmates, _Jesus_ – until after he devotes the rest of today to getting properly pissed.

* * *

It takes a lot of effort to answer his mobile after more than a few drinks. The first time he was too slow, and he had just decided to put it back in his pocket when it started ringing again. Instead of wasting time trying to read the caller ID, John just fumbles for the answer key and lifts it to somewhere near his ear.

“Hello,” he manages to say in something he thinks approximates a normal tone.

“Hello, dear. Did something happen at work?”

He lies to Mrs. Hudson because he hasn’t gotten around to working out an explanation yet. “Um, yes. I—what time is it?”

“Nearly six. Are you all right, dear? Have you got a concussion?”

Unable to think of a response that is not the truth, John focuses on the only thing he can right now. “Do you mind if—can you keep Ellie with you for a while? I can’t—can’t come home just yet.”

Even he can hear himself slurring and Mrs. Hudson sounds alarmed. “Of course I can. John, what’s going on? Is everything all right?”

“Yeah, I’ll be…out for a while. Okay? Just call Greg if—no, don’t call Greg. He’s probably busy. What time is it? If there’s an emergency, then call that—that—” John can’t come up with an appropriate epithet and resigns himself to just saying Mycroft’s name. It tastes a little like bile.

“John, you’d tell me if you weren’t well, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes, Mrs. Hudson. I’ll be home in a while, okay? I’ve got to get going. There’s, um…drills.” Regretting not thanking her for staying with Ellie, John orders another drink in which to wallow.

Some time later, Sherlock edges up to his seat at the bar, staring coldly at anyone who comes too close to him. He seems especially alien in this setting, surrounded by people still in their work clothes and the hubbub of a pub in its peak weekday hour. The faint disgust on his face reminds John of the press conference, so he asks, “What did you see on that reporter? I think it was the one with those hipster glasses.”

“Secret marriage,” Sherlock answers instantly, no doubt having followed the non-sequitor without issue. “And the wife was most likely having an affair.” 

John hums for lack of anything to say and then giggles at himself. He should hate Sherlock – it is his fault, isn’t it? – but he’s too enthralled to do that. Or maybe he’s so enthralled that it doesn’t really matter that John hates him. 

In the middle of trying to watch Sherlock out of the corner of his eye and making his vision judder, John gives up on finesse and just turns on the stool. For someone with a reputation with getting disturbingly close to corpses during investigations, Sherlock is being strangely careful not to touch anything even with his clothing. He had left the Belstaff somewhere else, no doubt to protect it and possibly to keep from sweating in the humid pub climate, and in just his suit, he is vulnerable.

John knows that it’s absurd to think of a wool coat as body armor. He still feels guilty for being in no condition to provide alternate protection.

“It’s your fault,” John announces in a too-loud voice.

“John,” Sherlock begins. For some reason, he doesn’t continue. His gaze is on the negative side of neutral.

“I’m doing this. If I’m going to be bad, you might as well come back.”

A frown puts Sherlock’s eyes in shadow. “You do realize that I had nothing to do with the paparazzi.” John flatters himself that Sherlock is anxious that he understands this.

“I know, Sherlock.” He attempts to pat Sherlock’s shoulder in reassurance but he’s only just too far away. The tips of John’s fingers brush against the front of Sherlock’s jacket as his arm falls down. Sighing, John rotates back toward the dregs of his pint. “This is all my fault.”

“I wouldn’t dispute the point if you wanted to indict Mycroft,” Sherlock bargains slowly. Even though that would be factually groundless. It sounds like a peace offering.

“What do I tell her?” John rubs a hand across his face and rests his weight on his elbows on the counter. It’s sticky from the gin he slopped earlier. That seems like it might be symbolic, but it’s hard to think metaphorically from the pool of alcohol in which his brain is swimming. He can feel Sherlock’s gaze, heavy on the back of his neck. 

“Were you following me? How did you find me? Or did you _deduce_ it? From the—the—”

Mercifully, Sherlock cuts him off. “I traced your cell phone. Mrs. Hudson was rather frantic after your conversation. You haven’t had nearly enough practice pretending to be sober to convince her.”

 _Not enough practice_. John grins to himself before he remembers that he’s only covering the upper half of his face. It’s no good anyway; if anyone could read him, it would be Sherlock, and he never needs much to know.

“You know, I didn’t drink a drop when you died. I wanted to. Jesus, I wanted to. But now… What are we—what am I doing? Why can’t I just be…good?” Sherlock knows everything else. Surely, if John asks, he’ll jump at the chance to show how much smarter than everyone else he is.

A hand settles, gentle but heavy, on John’s shoulder. “Back to Baker Street, I think,” Sherlock says authoritatively, leaving a folded bundle of notes next to the beer glass. “Come along, John.” 

A few minutes after telling the cabbie their destination, without looking away from the streetlights sliding by outside, Sherlock murmurs, “You could write a letter. I have confidence you can find the words to tell her why you chose this – explain your…feelings. For when she’s older.”

It takes a shamefully long time for John to remember what Sherlock is talking about. He mumbles something – it doesn’t register in his blurred mind, – closes his eyes, and rests his head against the seat back, hoping that Sherlock will leave him alone until he can at least attempt to keep up.

* * *

The suggestion is a good one. He could write a letter to Helena. Maybe she would understand; maybe it would make him feel less burdened by this dereliction of duty.

But the point of doing this is that she doesn’t remember him. If John has anything to say about it, she’ll never know that he ever existed. All the scars of this will be on his heart alone.

The first thing he does in the morning is to go up to make certain Ellie is safe in her bed. 

(That’s not strictly true. First, he texts Orman that he can’t come in today because of a family emergency. Orman calls back almost immediately and only growls, “Use your bloody phone like it’s meant to, Christ!” before hanging up. John figures that’s as good as a signed excusal and then goes upstairs.)

Ellie is, of course – safe, that is – her little face angelic in sleep, which only makes him feel worse. He still doesn’t know what he’s going to tell her so that she doesn’t panic when Mycroft’s people come to take her away.

His shower is necessarily short – he can’t ask Mrs. Hudson to step in for him again, not after she had to do it all day yesterday, and Ellie will be up soon. By the time he gets out of the bathroom, she is in the sitting room, stuffed turtle dangling from her hand by one flipper as she systematically demolishes the lower shelves in the bookcase.

“What are you looking for, love?” The endearment suddenly sounds like a vicious lie, and John resolves not to use it again.

“Books.”

“Well, you’ve found them. Why are you putting them on the floor?”

But she is too young to articulate her motives and only says “Book!” while waving an example for his edification, and nearly brains herself with _The Courage to Be_ in the process.

He should tell her to clean up her mess. That would be the responsible, fatherly thing to do. Otherwise, she won’t feel responsible for the consequences of her actions and feel entitled. 

Sighing, he suggests breaking for breakfast and figures he’ll have plenty of time this afternoon to put the books back in order.

* * *

At least he hasn’t updated the blog since just after Sherlock’s fall. At least nobody in the media knows about Ellie.

This is the mantra John repeats to himself when he texts Lestrade and asks him to come by later. Greg comes over around his lunchtime, which John knows is a sacrifice. That doesn’t make him feel any better about what he must do now.

With Ellie happily occupied with his stethoscope and bandages and giving checkups to all her stuffed animals, John takes Greg back downstairs to Mrs. Hudson’s flat. The fewer times he has to do this must be the better.

He gives them the most stripped down explanation he can and offers no excuses. Greg looks angry and grieved but not surprised. Mrs. Hudson says she should be furious with him, but she seems more to be resigned.

Greg drags a hand over his face with a heavy sigh. “When?”

“Monday.”

“Bloody hell.”

“The poor dear,” Mrs. Hudson frets, fiddling anxiously with her sleeves and skirt and the tchotchkes on her end table. Greg touches her arm reassuringly and she gives him a watery smile, patting his hand in thanks. 

John bows his head to show his shame. “I know. I—I know. I have to get back up there, look after her.”

They let him go; Greg’s expression is pitying, like he’s thinking John is a poor sod too weak to do what’s good for anybody besides Sherlock Holmes.

* * *

What he says to the lads at work is mostly true, but much less true than what he told Lestrade and Mrs. Hudson. Dakko and O’Mahoney he tells while they’re running diagnostics on their vehicle. They’re as sympathetic as they can be and don’t ask for too much clarification beyond the initial description of an unexpected and incontestable issue with the adoption process. 

He calls Huw aside to tell him personally, internally grateful that he never did get around to having him over to meet Ellie.

“I’m so sorry, John,” Huw laments, awkwardly patting his shoulder even though John is fairly certain he doesn’t appear very much in need of consolation. Maybe Huw thinks he’s a stiff upper lip kind of bloke repressing his emotional pain. 

Brightening, Huw offers a cheerful thought: “But I heard your friend Sherlock Holmes is alive, hey? That’s good, at least, isn’t it?”

* * *

On Sunday, John sets Ellie in his chair and kneels in front of her. She has napped and has her favorite plushie on hand for comfort, and John figures there will never be a better time, so he may as well bite the bullet.

“Helena, tomorrow some people are going to come over. Not Mrs. Hudson and not Greg, okay? They’re nice people who are going to take you to a new home. Do you understand?”

“Yes.” She’s hardly paying attention to him, only saying what she thinks will soonest let her go back to her playing.

“Ellie, tonight we’re going to pack up your clothes and your favorite toys so they’ll be ready to go tomorrow. You’re going to go to a new home.”

“Okay, Daddy.”

Unable to do more at the moment, John lets her get down and steels himself for the next steps.

Ellie seems to enjoy the process of fetching all her things for John to fold and stuff into a suitcase that had appeared mysteriously on his kitchen table on Friday. Mrs. Hudson reported a sighting earlier that day, so John suspects Sherlock is behind its manifestation, though he’s not certain whether he did it of his own initiative or on Mycroft’s suggestion. 

He repeats the spiel when he puts Ellie to bed that night, and it finally begins to make an impression. She cries out of confusion and has to be rocked to sleep. It is a long time before John lets her out of his arms, and then he has to force himself to leave her room.

Monday morning he is sleep-deprived and no longer confident he’s doing the right thing, if he ever had been. He doesn’t allow himself to cling to Ellie in the last hours like he desperately wants to; the separation will only be worse for her if he gives in. The litany of the impending arrival of the social workers makes her unusually quiet and shy. She asks over and over to be picked up and John compromises their respective needs by braiding her hair and dressing her.

Promptly at nine, Anthea comes upstairs with another woman with a very gentle sort of face. Mrs. Hudson isn’t with them – they had agreed that it was better for her not to worry Ellie with crying at this point, and she had said her goodbyes on Saturday. Anthea hardly looks at John, which is bizarrely comforting, like his failure isn’t worthy of attention.

The other woman introduces herself to both John and Ellie as Alisha. Ellie hides behind John’s legs and begs to be held. He gets down on his knees but Alisha beats him to it, pulling out a tin of breath mints. Her hands fasten securely around John’s neck, but Ellie looks around to see the source of the rattling.

“Would you care for a mint, Doctor Watson?” Alisha beams at him when he goes along with it. “Can Ellie have one?”

“Of course,” he agrees, catching on. He makes a show of enjoying his mint as Alisha kindly holds out the tin for Ellie.

It is less than an hour before Ellie is willing to leave with Alisha. The relief John feels is tinged with a completely illogical and unconstructive resentment. He never does get to say a proper goodbye, because doing so would have reminded Ellie of the permanence of her departure from Baker Street. He just lets himself be swept along with the procession down to the car, Ellie holding both his and Alisha’s hands on the stairs. 

That is his last contribution as her father—no, her temporary guardian. It was always meant to be temporary, and he had just forgotten that at some point. Just before the car leaves, he threatens Anthea, “She’s going to a good home, understand? Your boss had better get this one right, or I swear to God…”

She smiles insincerely and says what he needs to hear, that yes, of course she will. John chooses to hear it as the truth, even though there’s no way for him to be sure of that. Deliberate and self-deceiving confidence is far superior to the other option.

* * *

Lestrade texts at lunchtime and comes over after his shift. He clearly doesn’t know what to do or say, so John asks what he has on at the moment. It takes some cajoling, but it is so much easier to be together once the topic has landed firmly in violent deaths.

“You’re barking, mate. He couldn’t have done that to himself.”

“One,” John holds up one finger and gestures to himself with the other hand. “Doctor, so I can say that it is physically possible. And two, Sherlock once did a very disturbing slideshow with pictures of a very similar thing.”

“Well, he was lying. Look, I don’t care how flexible it is technically possible to be, okay?”

“They were photographs!”

“Photoshop!”

John pulls out his phone and waves it menacingly. “You’ve got about three seconds to concede the point before I get Sherlock to debate you into submission.”

Strictly speaking, he doesn’t have Sherlock’s phone number. But he does have Mycroft’s and he suspects that Mycroft is more than a little invested in repairing John and Sherlock’s relationship.

It seems Greg is also invested, because he visibly hesitates before continuing to be needlessly combative. John thinks he’s being very considerate trying to cater to others’ desires as he follows through on the threat.

The conversation has meandered in the forty minutes it takes Sherlock to arrive in a flap of coat. Without greeting, he strips off his gloves and scarf. “I don’t have the photo files with me, John, but I’m moderately certain I can still—”

“No!” Lestrade flings out a hand to stop Sherlock from removing his more restrictive clothing. “No, I believe you!”

Belstaff slouching off his shoulders, Sherlock pauses. “Do you?”

“Yes, for God’s sake. Keep your ruddy shirt on, _please_.”

Sherlock’s gaze flicks around the room and then onto John. Is the afternoon of packing all of Ellie’s things into boxes to be taken away there in his face? Is binning the children’s cold medicine and toddler-friendly toothpaste and strawberry-scented shampoo? Or is it just the compulsive laundering of both sets of sheets and remaking his bed upstairs that are apparent in his hands and leg?

John wishes he knew, but it’s enough for him that Sherlock shrugs the rest of the way out of his coat, flings it carelessly onto the desk, and tugs his jacket into place like he always had done, looking down his nose at Greg in his spot before reluctantly dragging the desk chair over and settling onto in with extreme disapprobation.

“Mycroft thinks you’re being uppity,” Sherlock informs John while still glaring at Lestrade. “I’d encourage the behavior but that would just reinforce my brother’s immensely inflated opinion of himself.”

“Do you even hear yourself when you speak?” Greg demands.

“No need when I’ve got you hanging on every word.”

“I’d ignore the both of you Holmeses if I could get away from you both begging for my attention.”

“Reacting at all just encourages him, Greg.” John cuts Sherlock off before he can retort, “I’m making a pot of tea and ordering in Chinese.”

“You’re boiling water and sticking tea bags into mugs,” Sherlock corrects in a mutter, because he is incapable of self-restraint.

“Yes, and then ordering in Chinese; would you like a cup?”

“I suppose,” Sherlock allows grandly, pulling out his phone for a more stimulating distraction. “The usual preparation. But I’m not eating tonight.”

“Yes, you are. Greg?”

“Cheers.”

Sherlock heaves a truculent sigh that Greg isn’t leaving, which is completely and rightfully ignored.

Waiting for the electric kettle to boil, though, John realizes he’s smiling. 

Inside his pocket, his text alert buzzes against John’s leg; from an unknown number, the message just _SH_. His hands are perfectly steady as he carefully saves the number to his contacts. 

They drink tea and eat Chinese – John and Greg are able to threaten, bully, and cajole Sherlock into almost a whole serving, which is about as penitent as John expects Sherlock ever will be. As they both continue to act as though the past few years never happened, John pretends not to notice Greg watching him carefully and dawdling for much longer than he would normally stay on a work night. Finally, he gets up and drags on his coat, loitering in the doorway a bit as though hoping Sherlock will follow, but eventually leaves. John waves goodbye and is unspeakably glad that they’ll likely never speak of Ellie again unless they’re both spectacularly drunk, which is yet another good reason for him to drink responsibly. 

In an instant, Sherlock pounces on his chair, and then makes a face at the warmth of the leather from Lestrade’s tenure there. His fingertips are pink and shiny with burns. That’s the only damage John can see, though, so he can at least take comfort in the fact that Sherlock hasn’t been blown up recently. Sherlock has large hands, like would match the bruises from a violent manual strangulation on the neck of an Iranian kingpin called Rostami. John’s seen the photos, read the autopsy report; it was more than a year ago, so there won’t be any evidence on Sherlock’s arms or face of Rostami’s frantic scrabbling at his attacker in his last moments.

Mycroft must have made certain that the DNA recovered from beneath his fingernails would never find a match.

There are more than twenty-five kills linked to Jack Harrison. John remembers Ilseng’s bleached smirk – _He likes a personal kill, does Harrison._ – and wonders how many of them Sherlock executed personally. How many of them gave up their organs for experiments in the inevitable downtime?

“I know what you’re thinking,” Sherlock states coldly. The arrangement of their chairs abruptly reminds John of Ella’s office, which must be the most absurd thought to cross his mind in a while. Their relationship had never included much confiding of secrets, not least because Sherlock could deduce every corner of John’s privacy and was not bothered about bringing it up whenever John had tried to ask about Sherlock’s life before they met.

“Ask me,” Sherlock orders coldly. “You’re dying to, I can see.”

How many? Were there deaths too gruesome for Mycroft to let John know about? Had Sherlock enjoyed cold-blooded murder? 

The question he ends up asking is “Stay here?”

The sneer curling Sherlock’s lip goes slack. “What?”

“I remade the beds.”

“Obviously.”

“And you didn’t deduce why?”

When Sherlock is surprised but trying to hide it, his head rears back slowly and turns to one side (usually the right) but he doesn’t break eye contact until the movement ends. John has never observed that particular gesture in anyone else and had forgotten about it until just now. It’s a detail nobody would ever think to replicate – or ever use in this context; whoever would expect John Watson to surprise Sherlock Holmes? – and the proof that it really is Sherlock back at Baker Street is the reassurance John hadn’t recognized that he needed.

“Why don’t you care that I killed people?”

“Why don’t you care that _I_ did?” John fails to quell a grin. “As I recall, you were pretty impressed when you saw me do it.”

Sherlock scoffs at the implication that he has ever been impressed by anyone other than himself. This leads to a long debate over all the times John did show himself to be slightly less dense than the idiot masses, a point which Sherlock is forced to concede by virtue of his voluntary association with John but has no compunctions about arguing none the less. 

“I don’t think I’m sleeping tonight,” he murmurs several hours of conversation later, watching John carefully out of the corner of his eye.

“Well, I’m knackered and I have a real job, so.” John hauls himself up and stretches with a groan. “I don’t care what you do for the next five hours as long as it doesn’t interfere with my morning coffee. Good night, Sherlock.”

In the moments before he slips into unconsciousness, John savors the expression of startled delight that had provoked.

* * *

They fall back in together, so easily. Sometimes John wonders if the three years were a hallucination; surely it would be different if Sherlock had been gone that long.

And it is exactly the same, except for the moments in which John imagines the good life Ellie is having somewhere else. In his mind, a nice couple has adopted her and she hardly remembers John after a few months and not at all after not much longer. She paints new pictures that hang all over her parents’ refrigerator for years, and they frame a few when she’s older. Ellie blushes and rolls her eyes at her parents but is absolutely certain of their total adoration and support when she decides to study art at university.

Sherlock grows a garden of bacteria in Petri dishes stashed all over the flat; one set labeled ‘Condition 14’ and lettered A through J end up under John’s bed while ‘Condition 19’ and ‘Condition 4’ are taped to the bathroom walls. They have a series of disagreements that culminate in a spectacular row, after which Sherlock sulkily takes down the cultures that have begun to overgrow their dishes under extreme protest that “the experiment will be completely invalidated now. You’re a doctor – shouldn’t you have more respect for scientific integrity?”

And when John points out in his most reasonable shout that any biology textbook can tell him that bacteria grow best in warm, dark, and humid conditions with a rich food source, Sherlock heaves a reproachful sigh. “Yes, thank you for that enlightenment. I’m looking into the effects of powdered and liquid poisons and viral infections on cell proliferation versus environment and food source, which has been the subject of very little research because of some ethical committee clutching its collective pearls. Obviously, human tissue would be preferable but you always make a fuss about space in the fridge and bacteria colonies are more compact and do not become rancid.” 

After that fails to save his experiment, he stomps into his room and doesn’t make a sound or emerge for more than sixteen hours, which causes John more apprehension than anything else.

It is more than possible that Sherlock is perfectly serious and there are lethal toxins in the Petri dishes but John has been feeling Sherlock’s gaze heavy on his neck since he came back. The primary question driving this experiment, he’s sure, is something to do with how much he will put up with now. He is fairly certain he is passing Sherlock’s diagnostic tests. 

John is absolutely certain that very soon he will forget to remember Ellie at all. (He suspects that might be kinder for everyone.)

* * *

Sherlock still has zero restraint; over toast on the third morning, he declares, “You don’t resent me for making you give up that child.”

As much as it irks him to hear Ellie referred to that way, it is a worse blow to hear the truth said aloud so bluntly. “No,” John says finally, and concentrates on his toast. “I don’t.”

“But you liked her” – (Is that the most ringing endorsement that empirically can be made about his relationship with the child he called his daughter?) – “and it is my fault.”

“It’s really not.”

John had glared to forestall any argument but the only things Sherlock never fails to ignore, if he even notices them at all, are social cues. “Of course it is, John. It’s because—”

“Shut up, Sherlock. Just…shut up. Can’t you just be content with the fact that I don’t blame you?”

Instead of answering, Sherlock sits silently for a long time. John can’t look at him; it’s bad enough to feel that dissecting gaze peeling his actions and motives down to his most secret self. Sherlock eventually leaves in a wail of chair legs on linoleum.

* * *

Their first case back together makes John feel like he understands addiction. It is so fucking good there are moments he would give anything to live forever in the dawning illumination of Sherlock’s deduction and the exhilarating ecstasy of the chase; it hardly matters those moments are bookended by exhaustion and the sober realization that they’re flaunting their mortality on what amounts to merely a different sort of precipice.

Angelo is so overjoyed to see Sherlock that he gives them a bottle of wine gratis and two candles. He pats John’s shoulder and gives him a look that silently says _See, aren’t you glad I made you eat? You would have missed this_ like he knew all the time that Sherlock was only on hiatus.

On the walk home, John lets Sherlock have one celebratory cigarette and Sherlock lets John throw away the remainder of the pack. Expounding on some subject or other as they walk through the flat door, Sherlock whirls around, nearly on top of John, all gleaming eyes and teeth. He smells like wine and smoke and a faint whiff of the accelerant they had earlier prevented from being ignited, which is lucky in light of the not inconsiderable amount that had gotten onto their clothing in the process of preventing its ignition.

Startled by his pouncing flatmate, John freezes halfway through an autonomic jolt away. Sherlock stops in the middle of what was most likely a complaint (though John cannot remember for the life of him what the topic was) and stares for what seems a thoroughly excessive length of time. John realizes one of his hands is raised defensively between them and tries to lower it but Sherlock catches his wrist in a too-tight grip, and tears off his glove.

“Sherlock, what—”

He likes to believe he would have been able to finish that question intelligently but has an excellent excuse for not doing so. Bowing his head, Sherlock raises John’s hand and presses it roughly into his hair. Kind of product-y, John thinks stupidly.

“I’m really alive, John,” he insists, pressing the tips of John’s fingers roughly against his scalp. “Can you feel it?”

“I don’t—” 

Sherlock tears off John’s other glove and manipulates both hands over his skull, demanding, “There, can you feel it? Do you understand, John?”

Soon his fingertips are warm enough to feel the scar tissue under the skin, running jaggedly out across his right parietal bone from a substantial irregularity along the squamosal suture. John catches his breath and grips Sherlock’s head more securely. Sherlock sighs with something like absolution. His grip on John’s wrists loosens until it’s more of a cradle.

There is one fracture that extends back all the way to the lambdoid suture. The whole thing is alternatively raised and pitted under Sherlock’s skin, and John can only imagine what the x-ray must look like. Without his hair to hide it, the knot of clumsily repaired bone just superior and anterior to Sherlock’s right ear might be visible to the naked eye as a lump and a crater where there should be none.

“You actually jumped off that fucking roof, you _bastard_.” John’s voice is hoarse from the cold and the effort not to wake Mrs. Hudson with a furious diatribe against Sherlock’s spectacular foolhardiness.

“Yes,” Sherlock whispers helplessly. “I had to, John. It was the only solution.”

They are just buzzed enough from alcohol and the tail end of their adrenalin rushe that they keep standing like that in the open doorway for far too long as John traces and retraces the web of regrown broken bones and Sherlock just clasps his wrists in loosely held bonds.

John doesn’t remember how they got out of that position and that surreal moment. He doesn’t know why Sherlock thought John doubted his existence, either, and wonders if he dreamed the whole thing. Then he finds his gloves on the floor, forgotten where Sherlock tossed them away, and has to come to terms with the fact that Sherlock trusts John to told his head in his hands.

* * *

John had gotten so used to silence when Sherlock was gone – did Ellie make much noise? He supposes she did, but not in comparison to Sherlock – that the sudden reappearance of Sherlock’s violin in his chair is a shock. It hasn’t been out of its case for he doesn’t know how long – not since the last time he played it, as far as John knows. But now it seems Sherlock has taken it up again, and John is slightly put out that he missed the first revival performance.

He debates saying something but has no idea as to what that would be. So, he leaves Sherlock in effigy on the couch and settles down with a book.

Some time later, Sherlock abruptly stands, walks over the coffee table, and picks up the Strad.

“You’ve been playing my violin.” 

Stomach lurching, John fights the urge to duck his head submissively. Sherlock’s back is turned, but that never stops him from _knowing_. He never expected Sherlock not to notice that someone had played the violin rather a lot in he absence, but he was rather hoping that they would both politely ignore it.

“Yes,” he clears his throat. “I did. A bit.”

Sherlock’s thrum brushes across the cheek pad. “Why?”

“To annoy you.”

That doesn’t make any sense to Sherlock’s logical mind, but he just retunes the instrument and rosins the bow, making his displeasure at some imagined abuse known with baleful huffs and irritable sniffs. Maybe he realizes John has figured out that he waited for an audience before playing because Sherlock turns his back to John as he first sets the bow cautiously to the strings. The first few gentle bars dissolve into something that sounds like a fugitive.

* * *

John wakes to Sherlock peering through his magnifying glass at John’s hand. He should be disturbed by this, or at least perturbed that this is happening at half-four in the morning and that Sherlock is wearing a spelunker’s helmet for the headlamp, which is shining much more in John’s face than it is on his hand.

“Sherlock. _Sherlock_.” John pushes himself up on one elbow (without moving the hand under scrutiny) and licks his lower lip. “What the bloody hell are you doing?”

“Calluses, John.”

“Why do you have a spelunking helmet?”

“I didn’t want to disturb you by turning on the lamp,” Sherlock tells him solicitously, and shifts his head just so, causing the torchlight to flare across John’s vision.

That does not answer the question John asked. He fumbles the helmet off Sherlock’s head and sets it where it will still serve its purpose but not blind him in the process; Sherlock gives no indication of noticing a change. 

“What are you doing with calluses at four in the fucking morning?”

“I’ve decided to conduct a survey of calluses. They are extremely informative, even in people who don’t work menially. Here, this one is from where you pinch the skin sometimes while reassembling your service pistol. And these are from the violin. Look, John,” Sherlock lays his hand on the sheet next to John’s for a comparison. “You can see how you’ve been holding your hand incorrectly by the position of this callus. Not to mention that, while you are partially ambidextrous, your left hand’s muscle control is vastly superior to your right’s, and you probably can’t hold your wrist correctly through a whole song. No doubt you play abysmally.”

“I knew it would drive you mad.” Looking at their hands together, John has the fleeting and ridiculous notion that Sherlock is performing this harebrained spot-check to point out that their musical scars are nearly identical. “But I haven’t been playing for weeks, not since you moved back in at least. Why do our calluses match?”

“I couldn’t play while I was…away. I had to make do with the _piano_.”

“I didn’t know you could play the piano.”

Sherlock snorts and starts feeling for the texture of John’s calluses by brushing them delicately against his own cheek – presumably because his own calluses could interfere with the sensation in his fingertips. “Any philistine can play the piano. Even _Mycroft_ plays the piano.”

The sight of his hand being used to effectively caress Sherlock’s face stumps John for two fingers’ examination. “Sherlock.” He clears his throat in an attempt at a hint. “I was sleeping.”

“You can’t blame me for waking you.”

“What—yes, I can!”

“No,” Sherlock intones slowly, like John is being insufferably thick. “I took precautions.”

“Then how do you explain the fact that I’m awake before dawn? This doesn’t happen when you _don’t_ take a sudden fancy to my appendages in the middle of the night.” 

Sherlock seems to consider this, staring absently up at John while grazing the pad of his ring finger against his own cheekbone. His terrible sleeping habits are still in effect, and possibly worse than ever, as far as John can tell; the fact that he’s already (still) wearing a dress shirt and slacks at four in the morning is only the most recent piece of evidence in support of this theory.

“Sherlock?”

“Hm?” So, he wasn’t paying attention at all. There is a not inconsequential part of John that suspects Sherlock isn’t even paying attention now. 

John sighs and loosely curls the fingers Sherlock is investigating into his palm. “I have to get up in less than three hours and you need to sleep. You can do whatever you like with my hands tomorrow.”

On hearing his own utterance, John clamps his jaws together to try to prevent another bout of accidental innuendo – although with Sherlock, he ought to be more worried about blanket permission given to a practiced and decidedly morbid imagination. Even in the dodgy lighting, John thinks he sees Sherlock’s gaze sharpen and his demeanor perk up at the prospect.

“Within reason.”

Sherlock rolls his eyes and sighs melodramatically in the way that says _how can you be so insensible as to impose inevitably tedious rules, John?_ but he acquiesces to release John’s hand. Of course, he manages to flash the spelunker’s lamp in John’s eyes again as he darts out, probably very much on purpose, so there’s no fear that Sherlock has suddenly mellowed into a mature adult.

“Go to sleep, you twat!”

Not pausing as he clatters downstairs, Sherlock bellows back, “You’ll wake Mrs. Hudson!”

Honestly, John doesn’t know how she puts up with them. He falls asleep with a grin on his face and probably not imagined violin music floating up to him like heat rising from its own inherent lightness.

* * *

“You’re so happy now, John.” Mrs. Hudson looks fondly and exasperatedly over the mess Sherlock has left strewn about the kitchen in an ill-advised and thankfully futile attempt at formulating a diluted nicotine and caffeine solution suitable for consumption, so the room also smells overwhelmingly of wet cigarettes and burnt coffee. “I thought you were happy with little Helena but I don’t know how I could have thought that. Usually I can tell these sorts of things, and knowing you for so long!”

“I wasn’t happy?” John doesn’t think of himself as particularly happy now, either, but he’s more worried that Mrs. Hudson somehow saw the strain he had tried to conceal.

“Oh, I suppose you were happy enough.” She compulsively fetches a tea towel and begins dabbing ineffectually at the borders of the catastrophe. “But a body can convince themselves to be contented with anything, can’t they? But it isn’t quite the same, especially not when you already found what makes you really happy.”

There are days when John wakes up and doesn’t think about Sherlock until he sees the evidence of his existence or the man himself as he passes through the kitchen and living room on the way to work. The simple reason for this is that he is singularly confident that Sherlock will be there (in the flat, in the world) for John to find when he has gotten past the necessary business of existing and is free to _live_.

* * *

“John,” Sherlock says out of nowhere one day in the back of a taxi; before that, he hadn’t said a word for going on forty-eight hours. John had known they were going on a case only because a case is the single thing that could have driven Sherlock to put on his coat and hare downstairs after two days of near catatonia.

“I think I should tell you that I lied,” Sherlock states in his most fastidious accent, continuing to stare straight ahead.

“About the case? But you haven’t said anything—”

“No, not about the case, obviously.” Sherlock glares at the driver’s headrest. “About my skull fractures. Although technically, I didn’t lie; I just allowed you to come to the wrong conclusion.”

“Oh.”

“That’s all you can say?” Finally deigning to look at John, Sherlock mockingly imitates, “ _Oh_?”

“I know you didn’t fake the damage. I am a doctor, you know. And I saw your CT after you stupidly provoked that club bouncer about his urinary tract infection, so I know they’re recent.”

“I did not _provoke_ him and the scans were completely unnecessary,” Sherlock gripes. “I was fine.”

“You nearly walked into a completely stationary brick wall, so forgive me for being concerned your precious brain was drowning in blood.”

“And I was fine after all, just like I said.”

“You had a major concussion, but remind me what this has to do with the fact that you unsurprisingly managed to get yourself beaten much more severely about the head without me there to make sure you didn’t die for failing to keep your mouth shut around angry, murderous people.”

Sherlock fidgets restlessly; he touches his thumb to lips like he always does when he’s disconcerted. John rather thinks he manages to be unaware of his oral fixation. 

“I didn’t get them from jumping, that’s all.” Although Sherlock has recomposed himself, this comes out in a falsely dispassionate rush. “I know you said you didn’t want to know anything about it but I don’t actually fancy getting shot again if you find out from someone else.” 

John stifles a strong urge to gloat that Sherlock is clearly experiencing guilt. It’s difficult but made somewhat easier by the fact that they are on their way to a most likely ghastly crime scene. He makes the simultaneously juvenile and mature choice to merely say, “After you solve this case, tell me the truth. About everything.” 

He would and arguably has given up everything for even the chance to touch Sherlock’s coat sleeve. But that’s all right. It’s absolutely fine: The scars on their fingers match up nearly perfectly and while he was away, Sherlock carried nothing from Baker Street but John’s name.

As they’re approaching the crime scene, Sherlock takes everything in at a glance and flashes John an indecent, swaggering smirk. “Sixteen hours, give or take a particular stroke of genius on my part. How comprehensive is your knowledge of the extant iterations of possession and exorcism?”

* * *

It ends up being twenty-seven hours; John buys Sherlock consolation nicotine patches and ignores as best he can the bitter soliloquy about the new procedures Lestrade insists they follow. He will be more than merely contented to live like this forever.

It doesn’t stop him from getting into a violent shouting match during Sherlock’s confessions but, really, it is completely warranted.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you lovelies for reading and for your feedback! I am always available in the comments for a chat, especially about series three! (Just - _Anderson_. That is all.)


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